From 1976: Body of baby seen at MOVE compound

This story was originally published on April 10, 1976.

At a secret meeting last week at their headquarters in West Philadelphia, members of the radical MOVE group displayed the remains of an infant that they said had been killed during a violent confrontation with police.

Two city councilmen, two Inquirer staff members, a representative of man Joseph Coleman; and Rev. Wrennie Morgan of the Human Relations Commission and a councilman’s wife were shown the infant’s remains and were pledged to temporary secrecy by the MOVE members, who said they did not want the body disturbed by authorities.

They brought the body to their headquarters on the night of April 2 in a small cardboard box. After witnesses had seen it, and after an Inquirer photographer had taken pictures of it, the body was taken from the house and returned to its undisclosed “resting place.”

Members of MOVE said they were showing the body to select witnesses to substantiate the organization’s claim that a baby had been killed in a clash between MOVE members and city police five days earlier.

Those who saw the body were City Councilman Lucien Blackwell; Blackwell’s wife, Jane; City Councilman Joseph Coleman; and Rev. Wrennie Morgan of the Human Relations Commission, Inquirer reporter Ellen Karasik and Inquirer Photographer James Link Jr.

Police had said they doubted MOVE’s claims that a baby boy had been killed during a confrontation at MOVE headquarters on March 28.

No medical examination was made of the dead infant, and there was no way of determining how the child had died, whether violently or from natural causes, or whose baby it was.

The witnesses could not even be sure of the child’s sex.

The circumstances under which the body was revealed were nearly as disconcerting to the six witnesses as the body itself.

The witnesses went to the MOVE commune for dinner, not knowing why they had been invited. They were first given a formal, almost ritualistic meal of chicken, rice, spinach, corn and fruit in the basement of the ramshackle MOVE headquarters.

After the meal they were led upstairs and into a candle-llt room where the child’s body lay, slightly curled on its side, in a box that also contained dirt, grass, shells and other material.

What follows is the story of the strange events of that night.

*

MOVE is an organization that has existed in Philadelphia for about five years. In the last two years its members. numbering two dozen or more have been in conflict continually with the police and the local courts.

The group is opposed to modern technology. It is opposed to medicine, to bathing with soap and to electricity.

MOVE members scatter their garbage in the ground, where it decomposes or is consumed by a thriving population of rats.

MOVE members claim that they dispose of the dead in the same way they dispose of the garbage -- by leaving the bodies to decompose above ground rather than in closed graves.

MOVE frequently uses nonviolent civil disobedience to publicize and promote its beliefs. One of the group’s favorite tactics is disruption of courtroom proceedings, often by loud outbursts of obscenity.

MOVE has also long been feuding with the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I), which has tried to enforce city health regulations at the MOVE commune, a rundown twin brick structure of 207 and 30 N. 33rd St.

Last January the Bulletin quoted an L & I official, Joseph Della Guardia, as saying the MOVE members has “threatened to kill themselves and even their children if their premises were inspected.”

The article quoted Sue Africa, a MOVE member, as confirming Della Guardia’s statement. “We won’t let out children fall into their hands,” she was quoted as saying. “They’ll see just how committed we are to our religion.”

*

According to MOVE, a 3-week-old baby boy named Life Africa (All MOVE members take the last name Africa) was killed outside MOVE headquarters on March 28. They said that police arrived and began beating MOVE members with billy clubs. The baby’s mother, Janine Africa, was pushed on top og he child, crushing him to death, MOVE said.

Police said they were skeptical of that account. They pointed out that no body had been produced, and that, in fact, there was not even a record of the child’s birth. MOVE replied that it was keeping the body in hiding, for fear that authorities would perform an autopsy and given the child a conventional burial, which would violate MOVE doctrine. The group is opposed to autopsies and birth and death certificates.

That police version of the incident was that a neighbor had complained of a noisy disturbance at MOVE headquarters. MOVE said it was a celebration of the release fro jail of seven MOVE members.

When police arrived, they said, they were pelted with bottles. In the encounter six policemen were injured, none seriously, and six MOVE members were arrested.

When MOVE began claiming that a baby had been killed, Inquirer reporters challenged the organization to show some evidence. MOVE refused.

But a few days later, on Friday April 2, Inquirer photographer Link got a telephone call from Robert Africa, the group’s most frequent spokesman.

“He said there were a couple of other people invited to dinner, and I was also invited to come to dimmer, and that there would be an announcement,” Link said.

“So I questioned them as to what the announcement was. They said they did not wish to discus it on the telephone, but it would be worth my time to come.”

Link and reporter Ellen Karasik accepted the invitation. They arrived around 5 o’clock that afternoon.

“The headquarters is twin houses,” said Ms. Karasik, who had never seen the place before and was astonished by it. “One side of the twin has 32 dogs in it,” she said. “These dogs were howling. They were every bred imaginable. Many of them were pressed up against a window. Imagine a window filled with the faces of dogs - spaniels, shepherds, Weimaraners. ”

In was a cold, rainy evening. But the MOVE children wore only the lightest of clothing. The adults wore dungarees, sneakers and light shirts.

After standing outside in the chilling rain for an hour, Link and Ms. Karasik said they would leave unless they were told when they had been called there.

Robert Africa told them it would " be worth your while to say."

He also insisted that the two promise they would not reveal what they were about to see until MOVE notified them that the information would be released.

Link also pledged, at the request of MOVE members, to supply them with copies of any photographs he took. He later complied with that request.

At about 6 p.m., Blackwell and Coleman, Mrs. Blackwell and Mr. Morgan arrived. They seemed every more bewildered than the two Inquirer staff members as to why they had been invited.

Finally, the six guests were invited inside. It was about 6:30, and darkness was falling.

“They escorted us down into a cement basement lighted by two chandeliers of candles hanging about two long wooden tables,” Ms. Karasik said. “It was like entering another world. The tables were set up as though someone had studied the place-setting section of the Ladies’ Home Journal,” she said.

“White plates were set out at each table setting. Each of the tables had a heaping plate of corn on the cob, a large bowl of potato salad, a bowl of rice, spinach.

“On our table was a heaping plate of fried chicken, and on the table where children and some of the others members of the group would eat, was a plate of raw chicken legs, arranged symmetrically. It almost looked appetizing.”

The six guests took their seats, along with about 20 o f the commune members.

“Everyone looked at the food extremely cautiously,” Ms. Karasiksaid, “and they slowly passed around the plates and tasted it extremely cautiously. And at the other table were just sounds of children, and the adults talking to them.”

It was obvious that the commune had gone to great pains to make the guests comfortable.

“You see, we don’t live badly,” said Roert Africa, a tall, slim handsome black man. “We have all the comforts we need. L & I is just trying to harass us.”

Then, at the end of the dinner, as Mr. Blackwell were taking their first bites of watermelon, three male MOVE members rose from the table.

“They tapped me on the shoulder,” said Link, “and said, ‘Come on with us.’ I said, ‘Should I bring my camera?’ They said yes.

“So I proceeded to follow them up the stairs.”

*

After Link had left, Robert Africa passed around a spiral notebook, with a neatly printed note that said: “The baby is here. You’ll see it after dinner.”

The MOVE members said they were passing the note because they believed that the house was bugged by the police.

The note went around the table. First to Mr. Morgan, who stared at it. Then to Jane Blackwell, who elbowed her husband and told him in an astounded tone of voice, “Read this!”

Then the note went to Coleman. Everyone at the table was silent.

“Then,” said Ms. Karasik, “the notebook came to me. I got up from the table and bolted up the darkened stairs, following Link.”

*

Link was already inside the front room of the house. It was a small room, about 10 feet square, with no furniture except two small desks and a chair.

“It was so dark I was bumping into stuff,” Link said. “There was a faint glow in the room that came from three candles resting on two bricks.

“And then they said, ‘There is’ or words to that effect. And I looked down, and as I bent over to look down, the stench hit me, and I backed up.”

The corpse lay in a cardboard box on the floor. It lay in a bed of grass and dirt. There were shells in the box, and some fruit, and possible some garbage.

Link began snapping picture.

Ms. Karasik approached the box.

“I was abut five feet away, and the stench of that baby seemed to rise,” she said. “I looked at it enough to take down a description and then moved back to get away from the smell, and actually to get away from the whole scene.

“I was totally numb and sickened, and yet felt totally composed because I felt that I was not even there. The scene was so bizarre, so mystical, and those flickering candles - it seemed so ritualistic.”

Coleman entered the room now, and approached the box.

Then the other guests came, and formed a semicircle around the box, staring in dumbfound silence.

“Let all here be satisfied once and for all,” Robert Africa announced, " that the baby does exist."

It was probably not until that moment that most of the guests realized why they had been invited. Only Ms. Karasik and Link had any inkling that they might be shown the body of a baby.

“When I saw that baby,” Blackwell said later, “I was out of it. I wondered how I got involved in this. It was just something I never expected. It was very weird.”

Mr. Morgan said he “wasn’t sure why they wanted me there. But when I saw the baby, it was the last place in the world I wanted to be.”

Blackwell seemed especially uncomfortable at the sight of the body. Ms. Karasic said he kept looking out the window, watching the rats scurrying in the yard.

“It looks like you have lots of rats there,” he remarked. He asked the question nonchalantly, Ms. Karasic recalled, but he appeared to be stunned.

“Yeah,” a MOVE member said, “but they don’t harm anything.”

Then Mr. Morgan said, “I’ve seen rats bit babies, and the babies become sick and die.”

“No, that’s an old wives’ tale,” said Jerry Arrica. “That’s not true at all.”

*

Finally, the box containing the corpse was taken away. The six visitors were asked to remain a while longer in the stench-filled room.

One of the MOVE members made everyone in the room promise not to reveal what had been seen, until MOVE released the information.

When the guests had left the house, the rain had stopped. The air was not so cold as before, and it smelled especially fresh.

*

In the week that has passed, editors, along with Link and Ms. Karasic at The Inquirer have had to wrestle with the problem of whether to publish this account.

On one hand, Ms. Karasik and Link had given their word to keep the matter a secret.

On the other hand, there was a possibility that a crime has been committed, and that the proper authorities should be notified.

The Inquirer consulted two law firms about the legal aspects of the situation. Representatives of each firm said that, in their opinion, neither the newspapers nor its employees were in legal jeopardy in connection with the possible concealment of a crime.

And even larger consideration, however, was the newspaper’s responsibility to keep faith with its sources. The Inquirer decided to abide by its promises to MOVE members because it felt that any citizen should be free to divulge information to the newspapers and have it confidentiality respected.

On Friday, however, the Philadelphia Daily News - which, although published by the same company as The Inquirer, is operated separately - revealed in a column by Chuck Stone that there had been “unconfirmed reports that at least two high elected officials, the wife of one of the officials, and a minister have viewed a dead baby on the (MOVE) premises.”

Once the story was out, The Inquirer decided that it was free to publish this account.

This story was originally published on April 10, 1976.