Monday May 13, 1985, Philadelphia PA – People across Philadelphia watched as smoke rise into the early evening sky. It was a sign of the impulsive conclusion of a three-day siege staged by the city against an environmental and civil rights group known as MOVE. The smoke was from the burning of several row houses after police dropped a bomb on one of them. This astonishing moment was the result of three years of the city trying to force the MOVE to obey various laws and complaints by neighbors
Whether intended or not the dropping of explosives led to 11 dead. When the fire was finally extinguished, Katricia (14), Delisha (12), Zanetta (12), Phil (12), and Tomaso (9), as well as John Africa, Rhonda Africa, Theresa Africa, Frank Africa, Conrad Africa, and Raymond Africa, had perished in the fire. 61 homes were destroyed and 250 people were left homeless.
The complaints were against the communal group MOVE. The group had moved into a townhouse at 6221 Osage Ave in 1981, and complaints started soon after regarding dozens of ferel cats and wildlife being fed by the new residents, of a pigeon coop being built on the roof and refuse piling up.
Philadelphia police had a long-standing dispute with the African American liberation group whose stated purpose was to return to nature and a more basic and uncomplicated way of life. However, they also were combative towards their neighbors and authorities and broke many city laws and violated the common social contract by letting their children play naked,
MOVE was created in 1972 by Vincent Leaphart, who changed his name to John Africa. He formed a quasi-religious group based on the idea that all living things “MOVE” or they are dead. So “MOVE” was not an acronym, but the title Leaphart or Africa gave to the organization. John Africa’s teachings were against modern technology and the police and authoritarian state.
Donald Glassy a social worker from the University of Pennsylvania helped John Africa, who was functionally illiterate, write out the group's guidelines and manifesto and allowed the group to create a commune living arrangement in the Powelton Village neighborhood.
In these early years, MOVE grew modestly but was very active in protesting circuses, zoos, and animal testing labs as well as the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant and police brutality. However, they also generated animosity and open hostility from their Powelton Village neighbors. The group often broadcast their beliefs through loudspeakers to everyone and had a habit of “Natural Living”, so they didn’t always meet the city’s or their neighbor's standards of hygiene or waste removal.
By 1977, the city had enough of the complaints and ordered the group to leave the Powelton Village townhouse. For nearly a year, law enforcement, sanitation and social workers, as the fire department, had attempted to get the group to leave. Finally, on August head,978, hostilities came to a head, and the police entered the building, reportedly meeting and exchanging gunfire with members of MOVE. During this 1978 siege, Philadelphia Stakeout Officer James Ramp was shot and killed. Nine members of MOVE were arrested and sentenced to 100 years in prison each.
Subsequent investigation of the shootout indicated that friendly fire from other Philadelphia police officers killed Ramp. This conclusion was reached after investigation because it wasn’t an actual shootout; when the evidence was collected, no functioning firearms were taken from the MOVE members.
This siege set up the ongoing conflict between MOVE and the Philadelphia police. In 1981, the group moved into their new communal home at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood. Starting in 1983, complaints from neighbors began stacking up among various city agencies. Police and animal control received calls that MOVE members had removed the flea collars from their neighbors’ pets, collected and fed wild animals, built pigeon coops. Sanitation heard about refuse left outside in their yard, not in containers and piles of recycling. Osage Avenue residents reported to child protection and social services that the MOVE children appeared to be malnourished and rummaged through their trash looking for food.
Summons were issued to MOVE members in the hopes they would change or mitigate their behavior. MOVE members did not change their activities; they intensified them, broadcasting their message 24/7. They refused to meet with social workers and then threatened them. It seemed John Africa and his followers wanted to take the middle-class neighborhood as a political hostage. Newly elected mayor Wilson Goode, the first African American elected mayor of Philadelphia, was elected on his strength with middle-class voters. Goode initially decided to take a non-confrontational stance with the group and just had city offices ignore them.
By the spring of 1985, the situation had become politically volatile for Goode and untenable for the residents of the Cobbs Creek; they demanded action. At first, Goode expressed hope that the members of MOVE would tire of not having electricity or running water and would negotiate to leave. In fact, John Africa offered to leave if Goode released MOVE members from prison.
Goode requested Police Commissioner Gregor Sambor to come up with a plan of action to evict the group. One proposed idea was to secure the children and have the family court remove them. Goode also wondered if it was possible for 24-hour watches and when any member left the neighborhood, arrest them. Unknown, or unreported to Goode and Sambor was the fact MOVE members were bringing in railroad ties and steel plates and fortifying the townhouse, and the neighbors were arming themselves.
On May 10th, police began cordoning off areas of the neighborhood and advising residents that in the next 48 hours eviction would begin. Police set up barriers and took up strategic areas in front of and behind the MOVE townhouse.
On the morning of May 13, 500 police moved into the neighborhood to evacuate other residents in homes close by and to serve warrants on MOVE members. Sambor took to his own bullhorn and stated, “Attention MOVE: This is America. You have to abide by the laws of the United States."
MOVE members were given 15 minutes to come out. When they did not respond, the police decided to forcibly remove the people who remained in the house by firing tear gas into the house; MOVE members fired guns at the police. This began a 90-minute gunfight, with police firing an estimated 10,000 rounds of ammunition. When this did not get the group out, Sambor ordered the building, where seven adults and six children remained inside. To be breached, he approved two explosive charges which were dropped from a state police helicopter. These explosives did not completely penetrate the building, but it did set fire to the gas tank of a generator which then spread over the roof and interacted with the fumes of the tear gas and the entire building caught on fire, and the flames quickly spread to other homes. Sambor stated he had the fire department stay back for fear the MOVE members would shoot them, but witness statements say police also fired on the people trying to escape the fire.
Goode and Sambor allowed the fire to burn for an hour before they relented and allowed Fire Commissioner William Richmond to take command had the firemen engage. By this time many of the homes in the row housing were on fire, and it was another two hours before they gained control.
Surprisingly, this wasn’t the end of Goode’s career as mayor. Three years later, he was reelected in a very close race with former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, who had been mayor during the 1978 debacle. Support for the city’s action came from the state and federal government and several other cities immediately. None of the newspapers were overly critical of the action; no one in the national media was. Even with the destruction support came from unexpected quarters as Roy Innes, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality stated he felt the city took appropriate action and that Goode showed incredible leadership.
This might be because prior to the bombing Goode and Sambor had done a very good propaganda job of painting the members of MOVE as the aggressors in the city and had declared MOVE a terrorist organization. Many people in Philadelphia remembered the 1978 incident and were on the side of law enforcement.
Goode ordered a special commission to investigate, and two grand juries were convened, but no one for the city ever faced any consequences for the bombing, loss of life or property. In November 1985 Sambor resigned as the police commissioner and took responsibility for the destruction.
Over the years though juries have made a point to show the city guilty.
In 1990, the city paid $2.5 million in wrongful-death settlements to the families of the children.
In 1991, Birdie Africa, who subsequently went by the name Michael Moses Ward, received a settlement of $840,000, along with a lifetime monthly payment, from the city. Ward passed away in 2013.
In 1996 Romona Africa was awarded $1.5 million as the lone survivor in a civil suit. In 2005 a second civil suit awarded $12.3 million to those made homeless in the bombing and resulting fire.
The most insensitive and unconscionable action was revealed in 2019.
Janine, Janet, Sue, and Consuewella Africa were parents of the five children killed in the catastrophe; however, they had all been in prison at the time for the 1978 shooting. The mothers had never been informed of there being remains of their children; they believed that the fire had burned so hot it consumed their bodies.
As part of Mayor Goode’s special commission, forensic expert Dr. Alan Mann had identified the bodies of the individuals found in the basement of the burned-out townhome. While they were identified, not all remains were claimed and in 1986 Dr. Robert Catherman, Philadelphia’s lead medical examiner, transferred two sets of remains to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. They remained untagged, unsecured, and outside of environmentally controlled storage until they were used in an online anthropology course.
Reporter Maya Kassutto for the public radio news station WHYY discovered that the remains of Delisha Africa, Janet’s 12-year-old daughter, and Katricia Africa, Consuewella’s 14-year-old daughter, had been at the university for nearly 40 years without the family knowing. At the time of this writing the remains have not been returned to the family but the Penn Anthropology Department under the leadership of Dr. Rachel Watkins is going through and making sure they have identified every bone and are scheduled to return them this year.
MOVE still exists, if only in the office of Mike Africa Jr. Who was six at the time of the bombing but living with his grandmother. He is an activist and speaker who has written about the bombing and survivors. He is raising money to buy back the 6221 Osage property for a memorial museum.
Sources:
Persons, Georgia A. “The Philadelphia Move Incident as an Anomaly in Models of Mayoral Leadership.” Phylon (1960-) 48, no. 4 (1987): 249–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/274482.
Rooney, Shannon. Memory, Margins, and Materiality: The Philadelphia MOVE Bombing. United States: Temple University Libraries, 2020.
Boyette, Michael., Boyette, Randi. Let It Burn: MOVE, the Philadelphia Police Department, and the Confrontation That Changed a City. United States: Endpapers Press, 2013.
Floyd-Thomas, J. M. “The Burning of Rebellious Thoughts: MOVE as Revolutionary Black Humanism.” The Black Scholar 32, no. 1 (2002): 11–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41068961.
Africa Jr., Mike. On a Move: Philadelphia’s Notorious Bombing and a Native Son’s Lifelong Battle for Justice. United States: HarperCollins, 2024.
Ebram, Tajah. “‘Can’t Jail the Revolution’: Policing, Protest, and the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia’s Carceral Landscape.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 143, no. 3 (2019): 333–62. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5215/pennmaghistbio.143.3.0333.
No comments:
Post a Comment