 | The late convicted serial killer and death row
inmate Anthony Sowell
The rock in front of the "Garden of 11 Angels" monument on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Cleveland area activists, led by the Imperial Women Coalition, Black on Black Crime Inc., and Peace in the Hood, will host a rally and vigil beginning at 5 pm on Thurs., Nov. 11, 2021 on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland's Mt. Pleasant neighborhood where the home of the late serial killer Anthony Sowell murdered 11 Black women and raped three others once stood and where a memorial monument has just been erected in honor of the 11 Black women. The specific address of the event is 12205 Imperial Avenue in Cleveland. The event is also the 12-year Imperial Avenue Murders anniversary rally and march.
Paid for by the Western Reserve Land Conservatory and dubbed "The Garden of 11 Angels," the monument has the names of the 11 murdered women engraved in its marble.
Led by an unknown suburban White woman, the land conservatory held a ribbon cutting ceremony on Sat, Nov 6. 2021 with a few family members that drew about 80 other people, but community activists who had fought for justice as to the murders were not invited and the community essentially stayed away. Also, Black men and Black male clergy, namely the Mt Pleasant preachers, were also told by the White organizers of the gathering that they could not speak at the event.
"Our rally and vigil will be inclusive and will include Black women activists who have been in the trenches for 12 years relative to the Imperial Avenue Murders, men and Black male clergy and family members of murdered Black women who were not invited to Saturday's ribbon cutting ceremony as well as Black elected officials and family members of Blacks whose killers remain at large," said community activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads the Imperial Women Coalition, a grassroots activist group founded in 2009 when the murders became public.
Coleman said that the anti-Black outside group that hosted Saturday's ribbon cutting ceremony and has no real ties to the Black community is connected to the current administration at City Hall that has essentially ignored heightened crime against Black women and that "our message at our upcoming rally and vigil on Imperial Avenue will include a call for the incoming mayor and incoming city council president to address this growing epidemic of violence against women, Black women and poor women in particular."
Black on Black Crime President Alfred Porter Jr said it was disrespectful for the land conservatory to hold a racist and sexist ribbon cutting ceremony on Saturday that excluded community activists and Black women who have fought for justice for the 11 murdered women.
"It was completely disrespectful for Matt Zone and the Western Reserve Land Conservatory to exclude Black community activists and the community as to their secret ribbon cutting ceremony for the monument that activists knew nothing about," said Porter. "And Yvonne Pointer, whom they and the mainstream media put out as an activist at the event, is part of problem as she was a liaison for City Hall when the Imperial Avenue Murders occurred and she would come to rallies and defend City Hall officials and police negligence around the murders until they got tired of her and she suddenly retired years ago." |
Porter went on to say that "White folks who care nothing about us and who do not live in the Black community will no longer subordinate us or mistreat us with the help of the mainstream media like that did as to Saturday's event on Imperial as it is a new day in Cleveland not only in terms of the office of the mayor and the city council president, but in terms of how we as Black and other activists mobilize people around the issues we continue to fight for in the trenches, including violence against Black women."
Black on Black Crime Founder Art McKoy agreed and added that "we need all activists and others to join us for our rally and vigil on Imperial on November 11."
Speakers for the event include McKoy and Porter, Cleveland Councilman Joe Jones, East Cleveland Councilman Ernest Smith, Rev Aaron Phillips, activists Donna Walker Brown, Khalid Samad, Delores Gray, Genevieve Mitchell, Laura Cowan, and the Rev Pamela Pinkney Butts, and Angelique Malone, whose mother was murdered at the intersection of East 93rd Street and Bessemer Avenue on Cleveland's east side and her killer or killers remain at large like the killer and killers of so many other Black women of Cleveland
Aside from the Imperial Women Coalition, other participating groups for the upcoming rally and vigil on Nov. 11 on Imperial include Cleveland Peacemakers, Black on Black Crime Inc, Peace in the Hood, Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network, Cleveland Clergy Alliance, the Black Man's Army, Laura Cowan Foundation, the Brickhouse Wellness Center, International Women's Day March Cleveland, Find Our Children The Missing-Ebony Alert, Survivors and Victims of Tragedy, Refusefacism Ohio, Carl Stokes Brigade, and members of the Coalition to Stop the Inhumanities in the Cuyahoga County Jail. Oct. 29 marked the 12th -year anniversary since 2009 when law enforcement authorities began pulling the first of what would ultimately become 11 dead Black bodies from inside and outside of Sowell's Imperial Avenue home, and from next door at the now defunct sausage company. Dead at the hands of serial killer Sowell are Tishana Culver, Leshanda Long, Michelle Mason, Tonia Carmichael, Nancy Cobbs, Amelda Hunter, Telacia Fortson, Janice Webb, Kim Yvette Smith, and Diane Turner. Dubbed the 'Cleveland strangler," Sowell, who died earlier this year in prison and on death row of a terminal illness at 61-years-old, was convicted in 2011 by a Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas jury on 82 of 83 counts, including 11 counts of aggravated murder and three counts of rape. Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose, the trial court judge who presided over Sowell's criminal case and a former Cleveland Browns football player, handed the serial killer a death sentence. Six of the 11 murdered women were killed by Sowell after Cleveland police released him from custody in 2008 on a rape complaint, the serial killer arrested again in 2009 on another rape complaint that stuck, but only after he murdered six more women. Police also ignored missing persons reports filed by family members of the victims, allegedly because the victims were poor Black women. Sowell and his lawyers exhausted all appeals that sought to overturn his convictions and death sentence, including to the U.S. Supreme court, which refused to hear his case in 2017. The city settled with the families of the six women murdered after Sowell was erroneously released from custody in 2008 in spite of a pending rape complaint with police for $1 million, which was split between the six families. Five other families that sued await settlement. A former U.S. marine, Sowell served 15 years in prison for attempted rape prior to the Imperial Avenue Murders.
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