MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy | Shattered Peace

Description: MOVE relocates to Cobbs Creek, a predominantly Black middle-class neighborhood in Philadelphia, disrupting life as its residents know it. Former neighbors recount the rising tensions between MOVE and the residents of Philadelphia’s 6221 Osage Avenue, as MOVE employs new disruptive tactics — including a bullhorn, vermin, and a bunker — in their fight to free imprisoned members.

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[Music]

Voiceover: MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy is a production of Temple University Klein College’s Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Voiceover: Hey! Rowhome Productions.

Yvonne Latty: Content warning, this series contains descriptions of abuse, trauma, and foul language.

Tyree Johnson: Hi. My name is Tyree Johnson. I’ve been in this house at 62nd and Pine for 53 years now.

Linn Washington: Oh my goodness.

Tyree: I’m getting old, that’s what it is [Laughter]

Linn Washington, narrating: Tyree and I have been friends for nearly fifty years. We were coworkers at The Philadelphia Daily News back in the 1980’s. He’s now 80 years old.

Tyree: Born, raised and will die here in Philadelphia.

Linn: What was the neighborhood like when you-when you moved in?

Tyree: We bought this house in ’71. April Fool’s Day, ’71. And, it just happened to be in a nice neighborhood. And I had, you know, three kids, two boys and a girl.

Linn, narrating: Tyree was 27-years-old and his wife was pregnant. The price was right for a growing family, and the neighborhood was a big part of the appeal.

Tyree: We had a lot of kids on the block, and, I used to take some of them fishing and, to the ball games and, and soccer. Although I hated soccer, it was something that the kids liked to play. Oh, it was a great neighborhood.

LINN: The area was a nice place for any family to live, until in 1981, MOVE moved in.

[Music]

Ramona Africa: [on loudspeaker] Y’all talking about all those rules today how it’s calm around here, and how everything is quiet and peaceful? Well come the fuck on up here motherfucker and lets get some noise started.

Linn, narrating: I’m Linn Washington. I’ve been covering MOVE for 50 years. I’m an investigative reporter and a journalism professor at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication. This is MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy, a podcast about double standards of justice, a so-called out of control cult, police brutality, and the inequity that underlined it all.

And this is Episode Three: Shattered Peace.

Linn, narrating: Let me set the stage here: after the 1978 confrontation with police in Powelton Village and the death of police officer James Ramp, nine MOVE members were sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison for the officer’s murder. But John Africa continued to lead his followers, now spread out in over a dozen homes across the city. MOVE’s main cause was now the release of their imprisoned members. Tyree had been covering MOVE since the seventies, when they were in Powelton Village.

Tyree: I was probably the first reporter to-to report on them and their lifestyle.

Linn, narrating: He’d seen their mission of saving stray animals in full force in Powelton Village. Which meant roaches, bugs, rats, and flies crawled and flew into the homes of their neighbors.

Tyree: And then I interviewed, a family that was-whose property abutted their backyard. And I went on in and they took me in their dining room, and their ceiling was coated with green flies. I mean, it was just unbelievable. And they were from Africa and, they objected to MOVE taking the last name of Africa because they said Africans would never live like this.

Linn, narrating: In 1981, Frank Africa, who was serving as MOVE’s Naturalist Minister, moved into the home of his mother, Louise James, at 6221 Osage Avenue. Louise was a long distance operator for the phone company. She had quietly lived on Osage Avenue for 27 years. In 1982, Louise’s brother John Africa also joined her and Frank there and one by one more MOVE members moved into the rowhome. And quickly, Osage Avenue became their headquarters.

Linn: When members of MOVE started coming on in larger numbers to Osage Avenue, what was that like?

Tyree: I was surprised when they went there. At first it was kind of serene. They took the-they scraped the paint off the, the front because they believed that wood needs to breathe and that, painting, wood, suffocates wood and stops us from, quote, “Moving forward.” And that’s, one of the things what they call about MOVE, they want, nature to move forward, which meant that if you take the paint off, eventually it would rot.

Linn, narrating: That seemed odd, but the first thing to really concern Tyree was the MOVE children. They walked around the neighborhood only wearing underwear or raggedy clothes, with distended stomachs. They didn’t go to school. Their uncombed hair grew out into dreadlocks. They were only allowed to eat raw food like garlic, onion and potatoes.

Tyree: I remember once when I was in my bedroom and, and Wednesday, they used to pick up the garbage in the front. They don’t do it anymore. And I saw the kids, across the street there, going through a garbage bucket, getting something to eat. I was surprised that they would be eating out of a garbage can.

Linn: And did things get worse?

Tyree: Well, they’d complain so much, climbing up, the side of the or the front of the building by one of the members, one of the adult men carrying a rifle on his back type thing, running across the roof of Osage Avenue homes, having a loudspeaker at night. Which I could hear, at night. And they were talking about very personal matters. I don’t know if they were true or not, but they were very personal and very hurtful.

[Music]

Linn, narrating: MOVE said their nine imprisoned members were innocent, and they wanted their Osage Avenue neighbors to put pressure on officials to free the MOVE nine. The loudspeaker rants on Osage Avenue were endless. The sound permeated the whole neighborhood, and this went on for years.

Ramona Africa: [loudspeaker] …Y’all quick to call MOVE dirty, quick to call MOVE nasty. But you motherfuckers gonna be crawling on the ground. Y’all gonna try to be [unclear] than the motherfucking bugs…

Linn, narrating: It was the same tactic MOVE used in 1978 in Powelton Village: air your grievances using a bullhorn and four letter words. In 1978 the city had released MOVE members, but not this time.

Ramona: [loudspeaker] …Seven years. Separated from their kids for seven goddamn years, because you motherfucker…

Linn, narrating: Neighbors would later testify it was the soundtrack of their lives and they were fed up.

Inez Nicols: Why harass us, because their people are in jail? We didn’t put them there. We know nothing about it.

Lloyd Wilson: I watched my wife many nights, lay there in that bed and cry, wasn’t nothing else she could do. I think that we–what we really hoped for was that-some kind of way the city would find a way to deal with this situation.

Linn, narrating: Neighbor Cassandra Carter testified that the MOVE children’s voices were also featured on the loudspeakers and some neighbors feared them too.

Cassandra Carter: Sometime they used to have the children on the bullhorn to say things just like they were. Cause they were being trained in the same tactics as the adults were. And they would put the kids out as visible points, and they’d stand behind them and say whatever they had to say, using a child as a shield.

Linn, narrating: Longtime MOVE member Pam Africa, is also known as “Mama Pam.” She was not living at Osage Avenue but understood MOVE’s mission and the tactics.

Pam Africa: I didn’t agree with a lot of the strategy and all. But, you know, the thing was to get the people out.

Linn, narrating: It was about freeing the MOVE nine. She says MOVE members needed to get the residents engaged to fight against the injustice that was aimed at MOVE. The bullhorns and loudspeakers were the only way.

Pam: When your defense–when you gotta use what you gotta use for your defense and-of yourself and to bring attention to what is going on to you, “motherfucker” don’t mean a damn thing.

[Music]

Linn, narrating: I, for one, did not agree. MOVE’s strategy bothered me. I had started hearing about the growing mess on Osage Avenue in early 1983. I wrote an opinion piece in The Daily News about it. Here’s a taste of what I wrote:

“The repulsively radical MOVE organization should be declared persona non grata in the Black community. MOVE’s Black neighbors in West Philadelphia have asked the group to tone down its electronically amplified rhetoric and clean up its filth. MOVE’s response? John Africa, their founder, quote, ‘Does not teach them to be concerned about other people’s rights.’

If John Africa’s so-called revolution does not include respect for the Black community, then John Africa’s followers do not deserve the Black community’s support. What MOVE is doing in the 6200 block of Osage Avenue is not revolutionary, it’s revolting.”

Linn, narrating: MOVE’s lifestyle was the polar opposite of how the Osage Avenue families aimed to live. Their homes were safe and clean. It was a haven for middle-class, home-owning Black families, striving for themselves and their children.

Lisa Cates: And we had a pear tree in the back. And the neighbors, the boys used to climb up the pear tree and shake that pear tree and knock those pears down. We had a nice time, a really nice time.

[Music]

Linn, narrating: My producer Yvonne talked to numerous neighbors who remembered what the block was like before MOVE came.

Byron Willis: Everybody went to school together. Everybody knew everybody by name.

Linn, narrating: Neighbors gathered for weekend cook outs. They sat on their porches, greeting passerbys. Transportation was good.

Hazel Taylor: I could walk out to the corner and catch any bus. And I liked the area. I mean, like I said, I mean, we all became, like, one big family.

Linn, narrating: But John Africa’s vision of natural law had little regard for these neighbors. MOVE’s mission included a powerful love of animals – dogs, cats, racoons, any species really. Sounds simple, but they took it to the extreme. Any stray animal they saw found a home at 6221 Osage Avenue. The result was an overwhelming stench of animal waste. It invaded the neighbors homes.

The MOVE home became a breeding ground for rats, roaches, flies, and mosquitos that then crawled and flew into the neighbors homes and kitchens. Listen, Malcom X and Martin Luther King never advocated living with rats and roaches.

Lucretia Wilson: My oven-to cook dinner, which I was just determined I was going to do cause that was my way of life, I had to-before I could cook on it, I had to turn the stove on and let the bugs evacuate it. This was daily, before I could use the stove. And then, even then, sometimes there was bugs in my food after it was cooked and I would have to have to throw it out. And this went on, like, you know, I did this for months.

Linn, narrating: That’s neighbor Lucretia Wilson. The bugs were all over her home.

Lucretia: They just totally-the bugs took over our house, you know? So we had to adjust to the situation. And some of the adjustments I had to make was we exterminated all the time, you know, until it got-like the air was like heavy with smells of extermination in our house and it did no good. And my kids, it got so bad my children woke up in the middle of the night from bug bites, crying from things biting them in their beds.

Linn, narrating: Lloyd and Lucretia Wilsion were forced to move out of their home after Lloyd was assaulted without provocation by a MOVE member. By 1983, Block Captain Clifford Bond was going door to door with a petition against MOVE. Then he went to ward leaders and police to complain. He described how MOVE had turned Louise James’s modest home into a military bunker.

Clifford Bond: When the individual was on the roof with the mask and the shotgun, my daughter was in our picture window and she said, “Daddy, what is the man doing on top of the roof with the gun?” And I didn’t have an answer.

Linn, narrating: My friend Tyree says a city eviction was looming, and MOVE knew.

Tyree: They thought that the city was going to-because they used to go into the park with the kids, but they stopped doing that because they thought the city would try to raid them and catch them in the open. So they started to stay more in-in the house.

Linn, narrating: And then came the final straw. Up until this point, MOVE had been living at 6221 Osage Avenue with Louise James’s permission. She was the homeowner, she apparently wanted them there, so the city’s hands were tied. But in October of 1983, Louise James’ relationship with MOVE changed dramatically.

Tyree: They kicked her out of her own house. And she wanted her house back.

Linn, narrating: In the 1970’s and early 80’s, Louise had been MOVE’s Communication Director. She wrote their press releases, did interviews, even wrote the MOVE column for The Philadelphia Tribune.

But once MOVE headquarters had taken over her home, she became increasingly concerned for her own safety. MOVE confined Louise to her bedroom and didn’t allow her to walk freely around her own home. Neighbor Cassandra Carter gives an image of at least one confrontation she witnessed:

Cassandra: She had been chased out-out of the property in December by her son with a ax down the block.

Linn, narrating: According to a police report, John Africa ordered Louise’s son Frank to beat her, until she vomited. Frank then tried to smother her with a pillow–while MOVE members watched.

Frank asked John Africa if he wanted him to kill his mother and John said, “Not this time.” Some MOVE members blamed Louise for the assaults against her. Others supported her for pushing back on the “god-like” status of her brother John Africa and his obsession with power and violence. She told police she believed John Africa was insane. Fearing for her safety, she moved into her sister’s home.

She was angry and hurt. MOVE members then orchestrated a campaign against her, making threatening calls, as many as 50 a day, and then sending letters to intimidate her. But Louise wanted her home back, so she agreed to cooperate with the city who was searching for an answer for the neighbors. Her cooperation gave the city leverage to evict. But Louise was adamant, she did not want anyone to be hurt.

Louise James: I am very much afraid you’re going to have blood-soaked streets. You’re going to have bodies strewn every which way. You’re going to have children killed, and you’re going to have adults killed for no reason other than complaints of the neighbors.

[Music, midroll]

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Linn, narrating: In 1984 there was a new mayor in City Hall, soft-spoken Wilson Goode. The city’s first Black mayor.

Tom Brokaw: When Goode was elected he was praised as the role model of the new Black politician, the skilled professional, the highly trained executive who could manage a city, Black or white...

Linn, narrating: The reign of Frank Rizzo had ended in 1980, after serving eight years as mayor.

Wilson Goode: And I intend to be the mayor of all the people in the city.

Linn, narrating: Goode had been Managing Director of the city from 1980 to 1983. And while Managing Director, he met privately with MOVE, who were demanding the release of the MOVE nine. So he was more than familiar with their cause and their tactics, and as soon as he became mayor, MOVE threatened to disrupt his administration. Goode decided to meet with the neighbors.

Goode: I was very sympathetic to their concerns and wanted very much to respond, but also pointed out to them that the mayor does not have the authority, because he does not like or the neighbors do not like, the way some would live. To simply go in and evict the people from the house, that we don’t have those kinds of options in this democracy. And even though I would prefer they not be there, that would be an abuse of my power to go in and simply move the people out of the house.

[Music]

Linn: Hey, how you doing, Maida?

Maida Odom: Good, thank you.

Linn, narrating: Maida Odom was at The Philadelphia Inquirer when I was at The Philadelphia Daily News. They were sister papers. They shared the same owner and worked out of the same building, but they competed against each other. My feisty Daily News was the tabloid and Maida’s more staid Inquirer was the broadsheet. Taking a hard look at what was evolving on Osage Avenue was not a priority for either.

Maida: It’s not like the Inquirer had people covering the neighborhoods or people in the neighborhoods. They weren’t interested in them.

Linn, narrating: One thing the papers had in common was a scarcity of Black reporters. Maida was the only Black woman reporter on the City Desk and one of a handful of Black staff in the newsroom.

Maida: It was like the Civil Rights Movement didn’t happen.

Linn, narrating: Maida says in early 1985, she got a call from one of MOVE’s neighbors about the harassment. He was asking for coverage of the growing tensions. The neighbors were desperate for help, but her editors were not interested in the concerns of this Black neighborhood.

Linn: When did you first hear about MOVE?

Maida: It was a pretty open secret that this was going on. But the facility to do a meaningful intelligent story at The Inquirer, on the City Desk, where there may have been a second Black person working on the City Desk at that time. But the idea of dealing with it with any intellectual integrity was going to be hard fought on my own when nobody else was writing about it at the time.

Linn, narrating: She told the neighbor to get other reporters involved, and he did. He reached back out to Maida and asked her to come to a press conference on Cobbs Creek Parkway, on May 1, 1985. She convinced her editors to let her cover it.

Maida: And the neighbors are telling these horrific stories like having to wrap up their children at night because all the bugs that would come into-through the walls would be biting her children. People were talking about MOVE being on a loudspeaker day and night and going to them and saying, “Can I just-can you just go off for like three hours a night so I can get some sleep?”

Linn, narrating: The stories got worse and worse.

Maida: I would find out that one Christmas morning, they actually woke up the whole neighborhood on loudspeaker saying, “Motherfucker, Santa Claus.” Can you imagine, you’re waking up Christmas morning, opening your packages, being a family, and, “One, one, one, one, one. Motherfucker. Santa Claus.” So that’s what the life-the tyranny these people were living with. So I’m in a press conference and I kind of say, “Well, are they over there now?” And they say, “Yeah, you can go over there now.”

Linn, narrating: Maida and a group of other reporters walked over to the MOVE house to see for themselves, and get some answers.

Maida: And there’s this guy with this pulley going up and down. And I’m standing there and I’m saying, “What are you doing?” And he says, “Building a bunker.” And I said, “Why are you building a bunker?” And he leans down, and says, “For the confrontation.” And I’m saying, “Well, what confrontation?” And he said, “When they come to get us out of here.”

Linn, narrating: Then Maida says MOVE member Ramona Africa, their new Minister of Communications, came out of the house. She is a short woman with long dreadlocks, a former pre-law student at Temple University who found her calling with MOVE. She’s quoting John Africa.

Maida: And basically says, “Whereas if that you don’t feel the bullet till it hits you,” or something, something, doesn’t make sense. These people were mentally ill. They were living in a cult. They were-they were haranguing their neighbors day and night. They were deciding if fleas, mice, and rats had a right to live like human beings. Okay? They had children out there half naked in cold weather, eating raw food.

[Music]

Linn, narrating: Maida says she realized that day that these people were never going to win against the city of Philadelphia. But hearing Ramona Africa’s long-winded ramblings on MOVE’s front porch that day, she also realized that MOVE was not going to budge.

Maida: This is the start of the escalation to May 13th.

Linn, narrating: And that’s the next episode of MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy.

Ramona: [loudspeaker] All you motherfuckers are gonna die.

[gunshots]

Ramona: [loudspeaker] Y’all can’t come and violate the MOVE organization and think y’all can walk away with it.

[gunshots]

Milton Williams: I don’t wanna see anyone hurt or killed. But better them than me. They came in our neighborhood. We want them out.

Barbara Grant: We were reporters. We were journalists. We had to do our jobs. But I knew the people in that house. I knew them, and there were children in that house.

[bomb exploding]

Yvonne Latty: MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy is a production of Temple University Klein College’s Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Linn Washington is our Producer and Host.

Our Executive Producer, Field Producer, and Script Writer is Yvonne Latty, the Director of The Logan Center.

The Podcast Editor is Audrey Quinn.

Our Inquirer Editor is Daniel Rubin, the Senior Editor for Investigations.

Sound design, scoring, mixing, and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

Rowhome’s Creative Director is Alex Lewis. John Myers is Rowhome’s Executive Producer.

Our Associate Producer, Tape Assembly, and Lead Researcher is Natalie Reitz.

Original Music is by Royce Hearn.

Our Data Editor is Colin Evans.

Our Podcast Art is by Layla Jenkins.

Production Assistants Allison Beck and Nicole Barbarito.

We used the MOVE archives of Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.

Thanks to Josue Hurtado and John Pettit of the Center for their support facilitating our endless requests.

This episode used sound from WCAU, KYW, and the documentary, “We Are Here.”

Funding support comes from The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Temple University Humanities and Arts Award, Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communication, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Special thanks to the Dean of Klein College, David Boardman.

We are also grateful to Matt Curtius of Temple’s Tyler School of Art and Design and Jack Klotz of Klein College’s Media and Production Department and Audio & Live Entertainment Major.

Go to sinomn.com to check out archival stories on MOVE and more. Subscribe, download, review and share.

I’m Yvonne Latty. Thanks for listening.

Voiceover: Rowhome Productions.