The 11 women were strangled and murdered by serial killer Anthony Sowell, who sits on death row, Sowell raping three other Black women at his since demolished home on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland's Mount Pleasant Neighborhood.

Activists will remember the 11 fallen women and other women subjected to heinous violence at Thursday's public event that will also denounce state and federal cuts to rape, domestic violence and other necessary services to women in Cleveland and nationwide during a pandemic and otherwise.

Activists say they will march from the nearby church near Imperial to the site where Sowell's house once stood and then rally and give speeches.

"We will remember the 11 Black women strangled and unmercifully murdered by serial killer Anthony Sowell as well as other murdered and missing Black women, and will denounce cuts at the state and federal levels to rape, domestic violence and other services for women, " said Imperial Women Coalition founder and Cleveland activist and organizer Kathy Wray Coleman.

"I will be there and we will stand with women and protest with them at the Statehouse and elsewhere against these proposed state and federal cuts to rape and domestic violence services in our community" said Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, a Black longtime east side councilman

Domestic violence against women in Cleveland has increased by 35 percent during the pandemic, data show.

Other participating groups include the Cleveland Peacemakers, Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network, the Black Man's Army, the Brickhouse Wellness Center, International Women's Day March Cleveland, Find Our Children The Missing-Ebony Alert, the Laura Cowan Foundation, Refusefacism Ohio, Survivors and Victims of Tragedy, Carl Stokes Brigade, and the Coalition to Stop the Inhumanities in the Cuyahoga County Jail.

Oct. 29 marks the 11th year anniversary since 2009 when law enforcement authorities began pulling the first of what would ultimately become 11 dead Black bodies from and outside of Sowell's Imperial Avenue home.

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, 61, 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 a 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 have 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 $1million, 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.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. 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.