I just learned of The Women Survivors of Homicide Movement, which is led by Mary Franklin. I read about them in a Boston Herald article. From the article:

“A group of “women survivors” whose sons, husbands and other relatives are among Boston’s hundreds of unsolved murders are planning to pack the T next week to press police on diversifying their homicide unit and highlight the stunning number of cold cases.”

Franklin is quite right to push for more people of color in the homicide squads. I found that in New York you’re twice as likely to be murdered if you’re black, and your case is four times as likely to go cold. The Herald reports finding that in Boston “black men were killed at 10 times the rate of white men over the 10-year span, but only 38 percent of their killings were solved compared with 79 percent for white men.”

(Also, they have 335 unsolved murders from 2004 – 2013. My most conservative estimate of the number of unsolved murders for the same time period in New York is 1,650.)

Their event, called Turning the Orange Line Purple, is scheduled for Saturday, September 20th. They hope to line “one side of a T car from Forest Hills to the Oak Grove T station and back.” (With pictures of their murdered friends and relatives.) It’s not clear if they plan to line one car or the whole train. I also wonder if they plan to Livestream it? I’ll try to find out, and I’ll update this post if I do.

Update: A video of Mary Franklin speaking about the movement.

This photograph by Stuart Cahill is from the Boston Herald article I’ve linked to.