The Philadelphia MOVE Police Bombing
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
The MOVE organization is often labeled as a black liberation group or a black power group, but it’s a bit more complex than that. The group's name, MOVE was not an acronym. The group was originally called the Christian Movement for Life when it was founded in 1972 by John Africa. After a protracted, contentious relationship with Philadelphia police, MOVE’s communal home was bombed in 1985, killing most of the inhabitants including children.
39 years ago this week, on May 13th 1985, Philadelphia police dropped an FBI supplied explosive device from a helicopter to try to gain entry to the MOVE group’s compound. The fire resulting from this explosion destroy 65 homes across 3 blocks. Firefighters, who had earlier water cannoned the MOVE members in an attempt to evict them from the building, stood by as the fire caused by the bomb engulfed the first house and spread to others, after being given orders to let the fire burn. By the time the fire was extinguished, some four hours later, 11 people (including five children aged 7 to 13) died, with more than 250 people in the neighborhood left homeless.
I first heard of this incident while researching police violence against African Americans for a college project. I remember being shocked at the time that this incident that had happened just 8 years earlier at the time, was widely erased from the public knowledge.
MOVE’s founder John Africa dictated a document called The Guideline to Donald Glassey, a social worker from the University of Pennsylvania. The Guideline codified the group’s beliefs and philosophy on paper. John Africa and his movement’s mostly African-American followers wore their hair in dreadlocks, inspired by the Rastafari movement they learned about from Caribbean immigrants living in Philadelphia. MOVE advocated a radical form of pseudo-green politics and a return to a hunter-gatherer society, while stating their opposition to Western science, medicine, and technology. Inspired by the example as John Africa had done, his devotees changed their surnames to Africa to show reverence to what they regarded as their mother continent, and to reject their “slave names”.
John Africa's MOVE members initially lived in a commune in a house owned by Glassey in the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia. From there they staged bullhorn-amplified, strongly worded demonstrations against institutions that they opposed, including such zoos (MOVE had strong views on animal rights), and speakers whose views they opposed. as a result of their activities MOVE drew close scrutiny from law enforcement authorities.
In 1977 the police gained a court order requiring MOVE to vacate their Powelton Village house. Nearly a year later, they had come to a standoff with members of the community, who had not left. When the police attempted entry to the house, shooting erupted. Philadelphia police officer James J. Ramp was killed by a shot to the back of the neck. MOVE representatives claimed that he was facing the house at the time and they denied MOVE's responsibility for his death. Seven other police officers, five firefighters, three MOVE members, and three bystanders were also injured.
Nine MOVE members were convicted, and each were sentenced to a maximum of 100 years in prison, for murder in the 3rd degree for Ramp's death. Seven of the nine first became eligible for parole in the spring of 2008, but they were denied it. Parole hearings now occur yearly. In 1998, at age 47, Merle Africa died in prison. In 2015, at age 59, Phil Africa died in prison. The remaining seven in prison are Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, and Eddie Africa.
In 1981 MOVE relocated to a new location, a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia. At their new headquarters, MOVE members boarded up the windows, built a fortified rooftop bunker and broadcasted strongly worded (often profanity-laced) political lectures with bullhorns at all hours, drawing complaints from neighbors.
Members continued to rack up violations from contempt of court to illegal possession of firearms, to the point where they were considered a terrorist organization by the mayor and police commissioner. (NOTE: interestingly enough, the bullhorn was broken and inoperable for the three weeks prior to the row house bombing).
On Monday, May 13, 1985, the police, along with city manager Leo Brooks, arrived in force and attempted to clear the building and execute the arrest warrants. Five hundred police officers were present in “flak jackets, tear gas, SWAT gear, .50- and .60-caliber machine guns, and an anti-tank machine gun,” according to the MOVE investigation report.
Arriving with arrest warrants for four residents of the house, charging four occupants with crimes including parole violations, contempt of court, illegal firearm possession, and making terrorist threats. The police ordered them to come out peacefully. Before long, shooting began.
The police said that MOVE members fired at them. A gunfight which included both semi and fully automatic firearms ensued. More than 500 police officers discharged over 10,000 rounds of ammunition in 90 minutes. The fire department flooded the home to force the occupants to leave. The house was hit repeatedly with high-pressure firehoses and tear gas, but MOVE did not surrender.
Despite pleas for de-escalation to the mayor from City Council President Joseph Coleman and State Senator Hardy Williams, Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor gave the order to bomb the house. Mayor W. Wilson Goode and police commissioner Sambor had classified MOVE as a terrorist organization.
At 5:28 p.m. from a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices") made of FBI-supplied water gel explosive, a dynamite substitute, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house.
The resulting explosions ignited a fire from fuel for a gasoline-powered generator in the rooftop bunker; it spread and eventually destroyed approximately 65 nearby houses. The firefighters, who had earlier water cannoned MOVE members in a failed attempt to evict them from the building, stood by as the fire caused by the bomb engulfed the first house and spread to others, having been given orders to let the fire burn.
Despite the earlier drenching of the building by firefighters, officials claimed they feared that MOVE would shoot at the firefighters. Houses owned by innocent people who had nothing to do with the original altercation also burned. These houses most likely would have been spared if not for the firefighters inaction.
Eleven people (John Africa, five other adults, and five children aged 7 to 13) died in the resulting fire, and more than 250 people in the neighborhood were left homeless, by the time the fire was extinguished four hours later. Apart from a woman and 13-year-old boy who escaped when the fire started, everyone in the MOVE house was dead. Ramona Africa, one of the two survivors, said that police fired at those trying to escape.
Mayor Goode appointed an investigative commission called the PSIC (aka MOVE Commission), chaired by William H. Brown, III. Police commissioner Sambor resigned in November 1985, reporting that he felt that he was being made a "surrogate" by Goode. Goode, on the other hand, feared the Philadelphia Police Department because he had received intelligence indicating that he had been marked as a target for death by the police department.
The MOVE Commission issued its report on March 6, 1986.
The Mayor's failure to call a halt to the operation on May 12, when he knew that children were in the house, was grossly negligent and clearly risked the lives of those children.
PHILADELPHIA SPECIAL INVESTIGATION COMMISSION, MARCH 6, 1986
The report denounced the actions of the city government, stating that "Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable." Following the release of the report, Goode made a formal public apology. Despite investigations and formal apologies, neither the mayor, nor the police commissioner, nor anyone else from the city was criminally charged.
In 1996 a federal jury ordered the city to pay a $1.5 million civil suit judgement to survivor Ramona Africa and relatives of two people killed in the bombing. The jury had found that the city used excessive force and violated the members' constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizures.
Ramona Africa acts as a spokesperson for the group. She has given numerous speeches at events across the United States and other countries. Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of the 1981 murder of a police officer, was closely involved with MOVE. Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution in 2020 apologizing for the attack, which was rejected by MOVE via a statement on X (formerly Twitter) and demanded the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal from prison. MOVE continues to advocate for Abu-Jamal's release as well as for that of imprisoned MOVE members, whom the group regards as political prisoners. In 2021, it was reported the University of Pennsylvania possessed the remains of child victims Katricia and Zanetta Dotson without the knowledge of their relatives.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Seventy years after the Brown decision, many students are divided by their race and socioeconomic status. Vox: Why school segregation is getting worse
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Friday marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the “separate but equal” schools for racial minorities were inherently unequal and unconstitutional.
But so many years after the watershed ruling, new research confirms a startling trend: School segregation has been getting steadily worse over the last three decades.
Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Southern California found that racial segregation in the country’s 100 biggest school districts, which serve the most students of color, has increased by 64 percent since 1988. Economic segregation, or the division between students who receive free or reduced lunch and those who do not, increased by 50 percent since 1991.
The study primarily focused on white-Black segregation, the groups that the Brown decision addressed, but found that white-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation both also more than doubled since the late 1980s in the large school districts.
Why is history reversing itself?
Residential segregation, which researchers have historically identified as the root cause, isn’t the chief driver, according to the new study. The increased segregation also isn’t due to shifting demographics nationwide, as the country becomes less white. In most of the large districts that the researchers examined, housing segregation and racial economic inequality declined.
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Last week was challenging for officials at “The Mecca” of HBCUs. The administration had been busy at the start of the school year trying to calm nerves over violent incidents on and near campus, only to have a student pistol-whipped and robbed during the holidays.
And as fury over student housing conditions faded, fresh controversy exploded, forcing the university to make amends to its 2024 nursing class on Saturday with a special graduation ceremony at Capital One Arena.
Days before the rescheduled ceremony, an uprising with broken glass and angry family members shaking their fists forced Howard University to cancel Thursday’s original ceremony.
Here’s what happened. The Cramton Auditorium, where the ceremony was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., reached capacity before all the family and friends of the 280 College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences graduating students could enter the facility, according to The Hilltop, Howards’ student newspaper.
About 100 fuming guests stood outside the auditorium when security closed the second set of foyer doors.
They began chanting, “Let us in,” as anger and frustration reached a boiling point.
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Three different federal courts are fighting among themselves over who gets to draw Louisiana’s congressional maps.
In June 2022, Chief Judge Shelly Dick, an Obama appointee to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, ruled that the state’s maps were an illegal racial gerrymander. Under the invalidated maps, Black voters made up a majority in only one of six congressional districts, despite the fact that Black people comprise about one-third of the state’s population.
Dick concluded that “the appropriate remedy in this context is a remedial congressional redistricting plan that includes an additional majority-Black congressional district” — meaning that the state needed new maps with at least two Black-majority districts.
There’s been a lot of litigation since Dick initially made this decision, but the most significant recent development in this case, known as Robinson v. Ardoin, came last November. That’s when a bipartisan panel of the Fifth Circuit, the federal appeals court that oversees Louisiana, rejected many of the state’s legal arguments against Dick’s decision, but also gave the state until mid-January to draw new, legal maps before Dick could step in and draw them herself.
The state legislature took the Fifth Circuit up on this offer and passed a new law drawing maps that included two Black-majority districts. So it seemed like that would be the end of the litigation over Louisiana’s maps.
But then an entirely different set of plaintiffs filed a new lawsuit in a different court, the Western District of Louisiana, claiming that the new maps were unconstitutional. This second case is known as Callais v. Landry.
For complicated procedural reasons, Callais was heard by a panel of three judges, and two of those judges — the ones appointed by Donald Trump — agreed that the new maps are illegal.
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More than a year after a Travis County jury convicted Daniel Perry of murdering a protester in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry, 37, on Thursday shortly after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a full pardon.
A Texas state district court judge sentenced Perry in May 2023 to 25 years in prison for shooting and killing U.S. Air Force veteran Garrett Foster during a 2020 demonstration protesting police brutality against people of color.
One day after a jury convicted Perry, Abbott directed the parole board to review the former U.S. Army sergeant’s case.
“Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial,” Abbott said in a statement announcing the proclamation that absolved Perry. “Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.”
Whitney Mitchell, Foster's common-law wife, said that she had expected to grow old with Foster before Perry murdered him. In a Thursday statement, she said Abbott's pardon made Texans less safe.
“Daniel Perry texted his friends about plans to murder a protester he disagreed with. After a lengthy trial, with an abundance of evidence, 12 impartial Texans determined that he carried out that plan, and murdered my Garrett,” Mitchell said. “With this pardon, the Governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan and US Air Force veteran, and impugned that jury’s just verdict. He has declared that Texans who hold political views that are different from his — and different from those in power — can be killed in this State with impunity.”
Travis County District Attorney José Garza echoed Mitchell's message about the governor prioritizing some lives over others.
“The Board and the Governor have put their politics over justice and made a mockery of our legal system. They should be ashamed of themselves,” Garza said in a statement. “They have sent the message that the service of the Travis County community members who served on the grand jury and trial jury does not matter. ”
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NBA legends Alonzo Mourning and Udonis Haslem are unwavering in their commitment to uplifting African American communities in Miami, showcasing their devotion through their charitable outlets: Mourning's Overtown Youth Center (OYC Miami) and The Udonis Haslem Foundation.
The OYC Miami, a non-profit organization dedicated to aiding youth and families in urban communities across South Florida and located in the city's historic African American district, is dedicated to servicing its community. "It's a beacon of hope in the Overtown community, and it has grown significantly over the past 20 years," Mourning tells EBONY. "It's grown because of the relationship that we've developed throughout, the transparency of the work that we do and the education opportunity for children and families, free of charge." This year marks the organization's 20th anniversary.
Launched in 2005, the mission of the Udonis Haslem Foundation is to give hope to children and families in underserved communities through access and opportunity. "It's something we started years ago, basically focused on the community and the kids," he shares with EBONY. "As we continued to grow, we stretched our pillars into mental health, affordable housing and minority businesses."
The two trailblazing philanthropists held same-day events in Miami to support their missions and celebrate their success. Haslem partnered with Anatomy Fitness Miami Beach and Make-A-Wish Southern Florida to host another #HourPushUpChallenge, challenging participants to complete as many push-ups as they physically can in a one-hour timeframe. The sweaty good time raised $150,000 for Udonis Haslem Children’s Foundation and Make-A-Wish Southern Florida.
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The Washington calendar is filled with get-togethers for the diplomatic set, from embassy parties to book launches to private dinners with policymakers. Each gathering is a chance to network, sometimes with very powerful people, or at least glean gossip from their underlings.
But in a city teeming with people determined to garner attention for their causes or constituencies, one group is largely absent from such conversations: African diplomats.
It’s a phenomenon plenty of U.S. policymakers, foreign officials and even some African diplomats privately acknowledge. Many of them also argue it must change if African countries want the U.S. attention so many say they crave — not to mention more respect.
A sign of the status quo: Even though Kenyan President William Ruto is being honored with a state visit to Washington next week, House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected requests that he be allowed to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress.
“D.C. is a playing field. You’ve got to be on the field playing the game. I don’t see too many African diplomats on the field,” one European diplomat told me.
African diplomats say they’d like to be more prominent in the U.S. capital, but that, above all, they lack the resources.
Many of their embassies have just a handful of diplomats. Those diplomats often are underpaid; some take side jobs in Washington such as Uber or delivery drivers, or even at gas stations, according to a current and a former State Department official familiar with the issue.
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Human rights activists in Nigeria have launched a petition to stop a plan to push 100 girls and young women into marriage in a mass ceremony, which has caused outrage in the west African country.
The plan, sponsored by Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, the speaker of the national assembly in the largely Muslim north-western state of Niger, were criticised by Nigeria’s women’s affairs minister, Uju Kennedy Ohanenye. She said she would seek a court injunction to stop the ceremony next week and establish if any of the girls were minors.
Sarkindaji said the girls and young women were orphans whose parents were killed in attacks by kidnapping gangs that roam northern Nigeria. He said he would pay dowries to the grooms.
A petition launched on Wednesday that has more than 8,000 signatures said the Niger state government should prioritise the education of the girls instead of forcing them into marriage.
“We demand immediate action to halt the proposed forced marriages and to instead implement measures that will empower these girls to lead dignified and fulfilling lives,” the activists said.
Critics have expressed concern that some girls may be underage or being forced to comply for financial gain.
Sarkindaji and the Imams Forum of Niger said the marriage ceremony would go ahead on 24 May and insisted the girls were not underage.
Child marriages are common in the mostly Muslim north, where poverty levels are higher than the largely Christian south. Although the legal age of marriage is 18 under federal law, Nigerian states can set their own age.
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