May 13, 1985.

By late in the evening, a disoriented Japanese news crew arrived on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, asking frantic questions of local reporters on the scene. “Where should we go?” they queried. Where should they go? After 32 hours without sleep, having survived a hail of police gunfire and watched a bomb dropped on a row house, I could only turn and point behind them. A neighborhood was burning to the ground not half a block from us.

Exhausted firefighters had lost their battle against blaze, horrified neighbors watched their possessions and memories go up in flames. Helplessness and shock hovered over us all like smog. And the only real question was whether the inhabitants of the MOVE house had escaped alive.

They didn’t. Eleven people perished, including five children.

The MOVE members had established a compound headquartered in the heart of a well-established, African American, working class neighborhood in West Philadelphia. The fatal fire which consumed the community was triggered by a police bomb used in an attempt to evict the occupants of the three bedroom MOVE row house. Arguably the worst public action in the history of the city, the tragedy quickly became worldwide news. Despite televised investigatory hearings, not one of the officials responsible was ever found guilty of any crime. In fact, the city’s first African American mayor in office at the time was re-elected by a wide margin. Of the two surviving members of MOVE, one-Birdie Africa—a child aged 13 was placed with relatives; the other survivor, a woman—Ramona Africa, was arrested, tried and convicted of reckless endangerment and served seven years in prison.

Not many people understood the MOVE people or even knew that MOVE is not an acronym. According to the teachings of MOVE founder John Africa, it means “movement” and is meant to express the connection between movement and life. Their beliefs were (and remain) difficult to reconcile with much of modern and particularly urban life.

MOVE was dubbed a “back to nature” group by the press but that is a misnomer. While MOVE members eschewed technology and took the surname “Africa”, they considered themselves a family of revolutionaries. Their strong commitment to self-defense figured greatly into their life philosophy and their confrontations with Philadelphia police, as did their disavowal of the legitimacy of the man-made legal system.

When MOVE was founded in the early 70s, it played a positive role in its community. Members would walk neighbors’ dogs, wash cars, aid the homeless, assist the elderly, and make home repairs.

But in time, MOVE also evoked images of black people in long thick dread locks, loud disruptive protests and unkempt children whose parents refused to allow them to attend school. MOVE built a reputation for its staunch beliefs in a natural way of life and its adherence to the principals of John Africa. MOVE’s revolutionary beliefs often resulted in aggressive and often disruptive opposition to laws and regulations it considered unfair. The group was uncompromising in its opposition to “the system”-government, military, industry, politics. They remain committed to exposing this system as the cause of all man’s problems, from racism, drug abuse and homelessness to political corruption and AIDS.

I first heard of MOVE as a college student. They were “moving” on the zoo and pet shops to free the animals, challenging the system at school board meetings, rallies, public forums and media offices. They demanded to be heard and their strategy, based on the frequent use of profanity and confrontation, prompted regular contact with the police, District Attorney, and court system. But their commitment was true to the organization’s, as stated in their writings:

“Move’s work is to stop industry from poisoning the air, the water, the soil, and to put an end to the enslavement of life – people, animals, any form of life. The purpose of John Africa’s revolution is to show people how corrupt, rotten, criminally enslaving this system is, show people through John Africa’s teaching, the truth, that this system is the cause of all their problems (alcoholism, drug addiction, unemployment, wife abuse, child pornography, every problem in the world) and to set the example of revolution for people to follow when they realize how they’ve been oppressed, repressed, duped, tricked by this system, this government and see the need to rid themselves of this cancerous system as Move does.”

In a large urban environment like Philadelphia this strategy was a recipe for disaster.

The run-up and aftermath of the MOVE fire reflects a complex web of activism and community mobilization by MOVE members, West Philadelphia neighbors, Philadelphia’s African American community and ultimately an international cast of anti-death penalty advocates, from Hollywood movie stars to university students. The MOVE disaster was also woven into local politics and public policy which impacted Philadelphians and the city budget for nearly two decades.

MOVE and the Philadelphia Police

The 1985 clash between MOVE and the police echoed a confrontation eight years earlier in another West Philadelphia community. In 1978, police surrounded a MOVE house after a two month standoff during which, armed MOVE members routinely patrolled the rooftop of their “headquarters”, blaming the police for several assaults on MOVE women and the killing of a MOVE child, Life Africa. Gunfire erupted between MOVE and the police, although MOVE maintained it never fired a shot. When the dust settled, James Ramp—a 23 year veteran police officer, was dead. MOVE members were dragged from the house, at least one brutally beaten. The house was bulldozed on the orders of then-mayor Frank Rizzo, destroying any evidence of what happened.

When the ensuing trials were over, MOVE members were convicted of the murder of officer Ramp and sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison. To this day, there are doubts about the fairness of these trials. Community activists and some news reports questioned whether officer Ramp was really killed by “friendly” fire from his own police department. MOVE cried foul, argued that their “brothers and sisters” had been unfairly convicted and determined to free them through its own brand of action and activism.

The relationship between MOVE and the Philadelphia police department was acrimonious at the onset. In the seven years following the events of ‘78, significant segments of the black community supported claims of police harassment brought by the MOVE organization. By 1985, MOVE was convinced that it was headed for another confrontation with the department and the city. It began reinforcing the walls of its new home on Osage Avenue with railroad beams and built a “bunker” on the rooftop. One of its protest techniques called for the use of a bullhorn mounted on the house through which members made their case nearly 24 hours a day, spewing invectives and threats at police and public officials. MOVE sought to pressure neighbors to draw the attention of a justice system that refused to hear MOVE arguments for the freedom of its imprisoned members.

Neighbors held Hostage

But residents on the MOVE block, many of whom were initially sympathetic to the MOVE cause, felt they had become hostages to the bullhorn invectives and curse-laced tirades. The solid, working class black neighborhood also resented the “natural” lifestyle of the residents of the MOVE house—raw meat thrown in the yard for dogs, cockroaches allowed to multiply as a result of the respect all life philosophy, a dozen people living in a home meant for a small family.

MOVE was the biggest media story in Philadelphia. It sold newspapers and lead the evening news for months and years. Both MOVE members and the West Philly neighbors turned to reporters to tell their stories, hoping to gain the attention of anyone who might help them. In my first job as a reporter, MOVE people were regular callers, complaining of police harassment and unconstitutional treatment by the DA and courts, often dominating interviews with statements too long to be practical for a news report, filled with the group’s own type of propaganda. But inside the lengthy monologues were kernels of truth and a humanity that demanded respect and fair treatment.

As the “voice of the black community” my station offered MOVE more of an opportunity to air their perspective and delved into the tenuous relationship between the group, dominated by black members, and the community which was torn between their own needs for peace and their sympathy for MOVE’s position, particularly its difficulties with police. Philadelphia has a long, ugly history of misconduct in black neighborhoods that included a federal investigation of police abuse. My own commitment, to be fair and report accurately, engendered trust from MOVE members which would draw me close to epicenter of the MOVE story.

Neighbors had their own horror stories to tell. They began to feel they were being used as pawns in MOVE’s protest. Residents couldn’t sleep because the bullhorns blared in the middle of the night. They began to suspect myriad violations of health and safety codes at the MOVE house. Ms. Betty Mapp, who lived right next door to the MOVE house, complained of an army of cockroaches blackening her windows and invading her kitchen. The Osage Avenue block organization called city health inspectors and code enforcement. They feared their block would be the site of another 1978 style police confrontation. Their lives had become unbearable. Fed up, neighbors turned to the one person in the City they considered a real friend of black folks, the city’s first African American mayor—the man they had been proud to help elect not two years earlier.

In some ways, the MOVE strategy was working but it was working against MOVE. Neighbors were organizing to put pressure on the city; they wanted relief and a return to the lives they had struggled so hard to establish.

The City’s Shocking Solution

City officials were determined to avoid a repeat of the 1978 shootout. With a new black Mayor, there seemed some early hope for a well-planned, negotiated settlement. Hopeful rumors abounded; one persistent story described an offer from a Quaker group to relocate MOVE to a farm in the countryside where they could pursue their unorthodox lifestyle in peace. But escalating speculation about the inevitability of the coming confrontation overshadowed this optimism; gossip grew apace amidst erroneous reports that MOVE was digging escape tunnels under their house.

No one anticipated the city response.

What started as an eviction turned into an evacuation and the police occupation of an urban neighborhood. This time it was the police who refused to compromise. Frenzied neighbors and human rights activists, fearing the police were motivated by revenge, called on the Mayor to stop the police action. MOVE maintained that the police were coming to kill them and finish the job they started in 1978. In the early hours of the morning on May 13, MOVE requested a delegation of reporters to conduct negotiations. I was one of those reporters. Those of us in the press corps who heard our names on the bullhorns attempted to convince police to let us find a peaceful solution. They turned a deaf ear to these entreaties.

By dawn the next day, the police were at war and fired 50,000 rounds of ammunition at the MOVE house. The shootout rained shells on reporters and neighbors as far as two blocks away; but the gunfire never penetrated the reinforced house. By early evening, the frustration of the police was evident. They decided to use an “entry device,” a satchel of C-4 military plastic explosives, dropping the bomb on the roof to dislodge the MOVE “bunker”. The explosion started a fire that soon engulfed an entire city block. Philadelphia earned a world-wide reputation as the city that dropped a bomb on its own citizens.

The police were in charge and out of control. One of the promises made by city officials was an assurance that none of the police involved in the 1978 MOVE shootout would be in tactical positions during the 1985 “eviction” action. However, a public investigation of police conduct found that some of the police officers in the alley behind the MOVE house were the same officers involved in the first MOVE conflict and were friends and colleagues of slain officer Ramp. Fueling the police revenge theory, the traumatized child who survived the fire described the attempts of MOVE members to escape their burning building. Birdie Africa told investigators that some of his family members were trapped in the house, pinned down by police gunfire in the back alley.

I later did a special investigative report on what happened in that alley. FBI photos and forensic evidence suggested the remains of some MOVE family members had injuries that were consistent with gunshot wounds. Those photos and the sounds of the roaring fire covering the screams of the MOVE children would give me nightmares for many months.

The loss of life and destruction of property cost the City of Philadelphia $42 million dollars. Today, MOVE members still advocate for the release of nine of their “brothers and sisters” in prison since 1978. After a failed attempt to rebuild the neighborhood, MOVE neighbors are now scattered across the country.

Did We Learn Anything?

What lessons can be derived from the MOVE story? Certainly, MOVE’s resistance to the often dehumanizing encroachment of technology and its preference for a more natural way of life is easy to understand and enjoys more widespread support today. Certainly, Americans and particularly African Americans were sympathetic to MOVE’s cry of social injustice and longstanding police harassment.

But where does aggressive activism draw its line? When activists decides that no one is innocent and it is acceptable to “take hostages” to advance a cause—no matter how just—the sympathy of the very people who might be your best allies is lost. The public relations battle is also sacrificed as is the opportunity to present your case to a wide audience through the media. Tactics become the “big story” while the cause is a smaller report on the inside pages.

Maybe the MOVE catastrophe should have taught us that committed activists can and will cross a line that leaves the rest of us behind, befuddled and unprepared. At the extreme, on the fringe—activism can take on a revolutionary aspect with its attendant techniques (recall the abduction of Patty Hearst and the rise of the Symbionese Liberation Army). “The system” never understood MOVE or the depth of its commitment to expose what it believed to be injustice and corruption.

Perceived injustice will fester and simmer and find its own social, ethical, religious or political rationalizations. In this instance, the setup for confrontation led to an incomprehensible tragedy. MOVE lost eleven members of its family that day. Neighbors lost their homes and more. The black community was traumatized and splintered and the city paid dearly for the next 25 years. Many of us who covered the story can never forget what happened in West Philadelphia.

My hope has always been that we would learn to understand the motivations of those who don’t share our beliefs or those who despise what we treasure and are willing to take hostages or give their own lives in pursuit of their goals. My fear is that we will never learn from repeated instances of revolutionary actions (real or self-described) that will continue to take us by horrifying surprise. I still carry scars from May 13, 1985.

Barbara Grant served as Director of Communication for the City of Philadelphia. She has also had a long career in television and radio, during which she covered the 1985 MOVE fire and co-anchored the MOVE Commission Hearings, a public inquiry into the bombing of the MOVE house. She is currently a partner in Cardenas Grant Communications.