MOVE

MOVE was a Black liberation and back-to-nature group founded in Philadelphia by John Africa, born Vincent Leaphart. By the early 1980s its members were living in a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of West Philadelphia, broadcasting demands over a loudspeaker and fortifying the building with a rooftop bunker. Neighbors complained for years. The city eventually obtained arrest warrants for four residents.

On the morning of May 13, 1985, close to five hundred officers surrounded the block. Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor gave a fifteen-minute ultimatum, a gun battle began, and officers fired more than ten thousand rounds in about ninety minutes. Late that afternoon a police lieutenant dropped a satchel of Tovex and C-4 from a state police helicopter onto the bunker. The roof caught fire, commanders decided to let it burn, and the flames ran along the shared rooflines of the block.

Eleven people died inside the house: John, Rhonda, Theresa, Frank, Conrad and Raymond Africa, and five children known as Tree, Netta, Delisha, Little Phil and Tomaso. Ramona Africa and thirteen-year-old Birdie Africa escaped. Sixty-one homes burned and roughly 250 people lost everything. A city commission called the bombing unconscionable in March 1986, and in May 1988 a grand jury condemned the officials involved but recommended no charges.