Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day April 3rd, 1979, the city of Boston is up in arms and on edge over a string of

deaths in the Roxbury-Dorchester area of the city in early April. Around the same time there were also a number of

protests in reaction to these murders about a thousand people or so gathering on

Boston Common to advocate for the victims of these murders and their families.

The victims were black women.

In the end, the number of women murdered

would reach 13, all but one of them, black women.

This wasn't the work of one killer. A number of people would be arrested

for these murders. There's still a little mystery about some of the facts in this

case, but they were connected in that they revealed something about Boston and society at the time and that's what we want to talk about with what came to be known as the Roxbury murders.

We are not a true crime podcast, but what's interesting here is the community response and

how it interacted with race and class and politics of the time, especially these

groups that emerged, these black feminist groups like the Kumbahi River

collective who responded forcefully in this

moment and used it as a way to raise long-standing concerns about some of the more

structural political issues in the city. So here to discuss that as always are

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there

Hello Jody. Hey there. Um Kelly lots of Boston names in here so you're going to have to correct this and you mangle the

uh...

The penanceations.

...