Pictured is Angela Shute-Woodson, director of the community relations board for the city of Cleveland and senior advisor to Mayor Justin M. Bibb
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio Angela Shute-Woodson, a former community activists and the director of the community relations board for the city of Cleveland and senior advisor to Mayor Justin M. Bibb, has been added as a speaker for the Cleveland Imperial Avenue Murders anniversary rally and vigil, which will be hosted by the Imperial Women Coalition and other Cleveland area activist groups and is Sat, Oct., 29, 2022 beginning at 1pm at 12205 Imperial Avenue on the city's largely Black east side. For more information contact the Imperial Women Coalition at (216) 659-0473.
Mayor Bibb, 35, took office in January of this year and is the city’s fourth Black mayor. He succeeded outgoing mayor Frank Jackson, 75, a four-term Black mayorand the city's longest serving mayor who opted against seeking a fifth term in office.
"We will remember the 11 Black women murdered on Imperial Avenue and we look forward to hearing from our keynote speakers as well as the new community relations director for the city of Cleveland as to what substantive kinds of things the mayor and city council might do, if anything, to address this growing epidemic of the murders of Black women and girls in Cleveland," said seasoned Cleveland activist and organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads the Imperial Women Coalition, an activist coalition group founded in 2009 around the Imperial Avenue Murders of 11 Black women by the late serial killer Anthony Sowell.
Coleman is a key organizer of the event along with Black on Black Crime Inc. president Alfred PorterJr, also a community activist.
Shute-Woodson is scheduled to speak along with the five keynote speakers of Cleveland activists Angelique Malone and Ilyese Walwyn, state Sen Nickie Antonio, Cleveland Councilman Kevin Conwell, and Melissa Graves, CEO of the Journey Center for Safety and Healing in Cleveland. Malone's mother, Christine Malone, was one of some five Black women murdered in Cleveland along East 93rd Sreet, and her killer remains along with the killer or killere of three more of the other four murder victims remains at large Other activists will also speak in an open mic forum after Woodson and the keynote speakers speak.
Oct 29, 2022 marks the13-year anniversary of the day of the discovery by police and other authorities of the lifeless bodies of 11 Black women, who were strangled and murdered by Cleveland serial killer Sowell at his since demolished home on Imperial Ave on the city's largely Black east side. Dubbed the "Cleveland Strangler," Sowell died in prison of a terminal illness in February of 2021 while on death row.
Since the Imperial Avenue murders, and in the last two years, murders of Black Cleveland women in the city have increased by 50 percent, studies show, and Cleveland is one of the worst places to live in the country for Black women, a Pttsburgh study reveals. But in spite of this alarming data nothing significantly has been done by policy makers of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, or the state of Ohio, or federally to curb this heightened violence against Black women.
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. Community activists say that they will never forget the Imperial Avenue Murders as they continue to push for public policy changes to eradicate heinous crime against Black women of Cleveland, a majority Black major American city of some 383,000 people.
"We will never forget," said long time activist Art McKoy of Black on Black Crime Inc, who, like Coleman and Porter Jr, and some others, is among a cadre of local community activists who have been in the trenches for more than a decade over the murders of Black women on Imperial Avenue and elsewhere in the city.
In addition to the Imperial Women Coalition and Black on Black Crime Inc, other participating groups for the upcoming anniversary rally and vigil on Imperial Ave include Cleveland Peacemakers, Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network, the Black Man's Army of Cleveland, the Black Women's Army of Cleveland, the Brickhouse Wellness Center, International Women's Day March Cleveland, Find Our Children The Missing-Ebony Alert, Survivors and Victims of Tragedy, the Laura Cowan Foundation, Refusefacism Ohio, Carl Stokes Brigade, and members of the Coalition to Stop the Inhumanities in the Cuyahoga County Jail.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.