On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police had a long-standing dispute with the African-American liberation group known as MOVE. MOVE was located in a residential housing block in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia. On this day simmering tensions between the police and the group literally exploded when during a stand off the police dropped C4 explosives on the house occupied by MOVE, the explosions started a fire that the city allowed to burn. In the blast and resulting fire 61 homes were destroyed, 250 people were left homeless and 11 people were killed, 5 of them children.
Animosity between MOVE and their neighbors, the city, and especially the police had been long-standing and previously led to a standoff in 1978 where one police officer was killed.
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 all living things “MOVE” or they are dead. The tenants of the group were a mixture of the Black liberation ideology of the Black Panthers and Primitive Ecology/ Animal Welfare. In general, 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 Villiage 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 were also gaining a lot of very negative attention from their 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 police and social workers, as well as fire and sanitation attempted to get the group to leave. Finally, on August 8, 1978, this all came to a head and the police entered the building, reportedly meeting and exchanging gunfire with members of MOVE. During this first 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 indicates that friendly fire from other officers actually killed Ramp, mostly because mo functioning firearms were taken from the MOVE members. Three of these members died in prison and six others were eventually paroled between 2018 and 2020.
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; it wasn’t very long before their neighbors once again began complaining of the noise from the group and their loudspeaker broadcasts. Also the sanitation concerns once again became an issue. Starting in 1983 complaints from neighbors began rolling in among them; MOVE members reportedly removed the flea collars off of their neighbors’ pets, collected and fed wild animals, built pigeon coops, and left their refuse outside in their yard. Most distressing to Osage Avenue residents was 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 did not change its behavior, they intensified it, basically trying to take the middle-class neighborhood as a political hostage. Newly elected mayor Wilson Goode was elected on his strength with middle-class voters so the group might have had the right idea. What MOVE got critically wrong was thinking that Goode could release the MOVE 9 unilaterally. Goode for his part initially decided to take a non-confrontational stance with the group and just had city offices ignore them. His hope seemed to be that the group would tire of no utilities and leave, this of course was basically what the group believed in.
By the spring of 1985, the situation had become politically volatile for Goode. Residents of Cobbs Creek were demanding action. He asked for the police 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 were possible for 24 watches and when any member left have them arrested. At this time MOVE was bringing in railroad ties and steel plates and fortifying the townhouse and the neighbors were not helping matters by arming themselves.
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. Police Commissioner Gregore J. 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 returned fire at the police. A 90-minute gunfight then occurred, with police firing 10,000 rounds of ammunition. When this did not get them out Commissioner Sambor ordered the dropping of a bomb on a building, where seven adults and six children remained inside. When the bomb hit it 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. Goode had previously okayed the use of the explosive because at this point he was on the record saying they would arrest the MOVE members by any means necessary. 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 had the firemen begin to do anything and turned their hoses on, three hours later many of the homes in the row housing were on fire and it was at this point firefighters took an active effort to stop the fire, it was another two hours before they gained control.
In the end, 61 homes were destroyed and another 110 damaged, 250 people were homeless and 11 MOVE members dead
Shockingly this wasn’t the end of Goode’s career as mayor three years later he was resoundingly reelected. In fact, support for the action came from every level of government and other cities immediately. Even the newspapers were not overly critical of the action. Even Roy Innes chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality stated he felt the city took appropriate action and that Goode showed incredible leadership. 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. Also, many people in Philadelphia remembered the 1978 incident and were on the side of law enforcement. In short order, the city moved on, and people actually seemed to forget.
On the 30th anniversary of the bombing National Public Radio and the Philadelphia Inquirer found that many young Philadelphians were completely unaware of the bombing and even though there was a special commission ordered by Goode and two grand juries no one for the city ever faced any consequences for the bombing, loss of life or property. In 1996 Romona Africa was awarded $1.5 million as the lone survivor in a civil suit. A second civil suit awarded $12.3 million to those made homeless in 2005. While the catastrophe at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas is a touch point in time for many people the MOVE bombing is almost completely lost in the sands of time.
Sources:
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=jmurj
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/move-1985-bombing-reconciliation-philadelphia
https://www.inquirer.com/move-bombing/
