‘Untangling the Tragedy’: Our new podcast examines Philly’s decision to bomb the MOVE rowhouse in 1985
The Inquirer is cohosting a podcast that digs into the city’s 1985 decision to drop a bomb on the MOVE house, killing 11 people and destroying a neighborhood.
On the morning of May 13, 1985, the city dropped a satchel bomb on the roof of a rowhouse in West Philadelphia in the hopes of flushing a radical, Black-led, back-to-nature group called MOVE from its compound, a decision that led to the deaths of 11 people — five of them children — and the destruction of a neighborhood.
What amazes Yvonne Latty, director of Temple University’s Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting, is how many Philadelphians don’t know this happened.
It wasn’t taught at the schools of either of her daughters. A surprising number of young people she has surveyed have never heard of MOVE or the bombing.
So last August, Latty began working on a project to dig into the causes and effects of the city’s disastrous decision — a six-part podcast that The Inquirer is cohosting, based on interviews with MOVE members, neighbors, and journalists who covered the bombing and fire that city officials let burn until they could not control it.
Starting April 22, listeners will find on sinomn.com/move a raw and unfiltered tapestry of sound called MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy, as Linn Washington Jr., a Temple professor and former reporter at The Philadelphia Tribune and the Daily News, serves as a guide through the calamitous events.
Some of the voices will be familiar — from former Mayor Frank Rizzo, who detested the MOVE organization, to Wilson Goode, who as mayor approved the bombing; from local TV newsmen Vernon Odom and Harvey Clark to Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News anchor who brought the police’s 1978 shootout with MOVE into the nation’s living rooms.
Other audio has never been aired before, such as the drama that former Inquirer reporter Maida Odom captured on her cassette player as bullets zipped around her 40 years ago. On tape, she can be heard interviewing witnesses, then seeking cover.
“It was literally war reporting in West Philadelphia,” Latty said. “No one talked about the PTSD you could get from covering the stories. Every journalist there was impacted mentally.”
The trailer is live on The Inquirer’s MOVE page and episodes will drop each Tuesday, starting April 22.
Subscribe to “MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy” on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.