HH: Could you tell me about your understanding of, and your response to, the murders in 1979 that began in Roxbury and spread across Boston?
BS: One of the things that made the murders so visible is that things were happening quickly; a great number in such a short period of time. This was not a serial killer; there were several people identified as having perpetrated the murders. Some of the murders were never solved and have never been solved. It was such a concentration of violence against Black women in particular; the fact that the murders were originally defined by members of the Black community as being racial murders only, yet all the people who were murdered were women and were sexually assaulted… This is the wonderful combination that patriarchy gives us: the rape-murder.
We were going to join efforts to speak out about the murders and noticed who paid little or no attention to them. The Boston Globe paid no attention to the murders. The police department did not prioritize them. We were upset about the neglect and [the lack of] concentrated energy toward addressing the issue or being supportive to those of us in our community who were targeted by the crimes.
The pamphlet that we created — originally titled Six Black Women: Why Did They Die? (1979) — was written in response to going to rallies [about the] murders and having them be described solely as racial crimes. No mention of violence against women, gendered violence, or anything like that. And then, having men suggest, as a way that we could protect ourselves and avoid being hurt or killed, was to be dependent upon male protection. We were not having that as young Black feminists.
I went home and started working on what became the pamphlet. There was no email in those days. There were no fax machines. After writing a draft, I read it to other members of the collective one by one. They concurred. They had some input, and the next day (on a Monday) I called up a place in Boston called Urban Planning Aid, [an organization dedicated to] helping movement groups and neighbourhood groups. They helped with technical assistance around publicity and other kinds of things that would be useful for grassroots organizations. One of the things they did was graphic design if you needed to get a flyer or brochure done. I called up UPA and was told by the graphic artist how many characters across the column I needed to type in because it had to be the perfect copy. The technology we used was typewriters; there were no personal computers in those days, of course. You corrected something physically with whiteout.