40 years ago, Philadelphia, the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ (founded by Quakers), dropped a bomb on its own people.

C/W: anti-Black violence and desecration

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the home where members of the MOVE organization lived.

The bombing killed eleven people, five of them children, on May 13 —Mother’s Day— 1985.

The names of the beloved lives snatched that day:

John Africa

Rhonda Africa

Theresa Africa

Frank Africa

Conrad Africa

Tree Africa

Delisha Africa

Netta Africa

Little Phil Africa

Tomaso Africa

and

Raymond Africa.

May they rest in power.

May their memories be a blessing.

MOVE was a back-to-the-earth, Black liberation organization that rejected technology and systemic oppression.

Its members adopted the last name Africa.

Here’s MOVE member Mark Africa, Jr., now 46, who was six years old the day of the bombing, telling The Nation what happened:

“It was a dark day because of what happened,” [Africa said in 2025]. “But it was a bright day. It was a sunny day.”

Africa, who lived a few miles away with his grandmother, had spent so much time at the house that all 11 deaths, particularly those of the children, felt painfully personal. “Tomaso, he was the closest one to my age, and I remember there was one particular day. We were waiting for the snow to fall,” he recalled, recounting his life in the months before the bombing. “For a long time we didn’t see any snow. And we fell asleep in the window, back to back. And I don’t know how long it was that we were hanging out in the window, but when we woke up, snow was piled up. He was dancing in circles and then he ran out into it naked. He didn’t wait to put on any clothes, just ran directly out into the snow, jumped in it, and was just throwing it up in the air and letting it fall down on top of him. Shortly after that, he was bombed and shot to death.”

God.

Can you imagine?

Members of MOVE lived an alternative, anti-technology lifestyle that included homeschooling their children and rejecting all forms of oppression.

They were radical Black liberationists.

And do y’all know how much the U.S. does not appreciate radical Black liberationists?

A lot not.

A lot lot not.

Were members of MOVE a chill hang?

Were they easy to live next door to?

Maybe some were. Sounds like quite a few weren’t.

But we’ve previously established that a lot of righteous, subversive folks were not chill hangs.

It certainly doesn’t mean they are bad people.

It definitely doesn’t mean they should be bombed in their home.

Are you always a chill hang?

Yeah. I didn’t think so.

Being honest, it doesn’t sound like it was super easy to be MOVE’s neighbors.

For one thing, they composted all through their backyard.

If you’re a composter, you know what that can mean: rats, mice, roaches.

MOVE was radically nonviolent in their approach to these critters.

(Pausing to say that I appreciate MOVE’s radical stance on God’s creatures. It’s a tough thing to navigate in a neighborhood with, well, neighbors. How does one balance their belief in nonviolence, their knowing that all creatures are sacred and beloved … and … ugh, just: cockroaches. To say nothing of rats.)

Their neighbors did not to appreciate this “live and let live” approach.

MOVE members also brought home stray dogs to care for. Quite a few stray dogs.

Sounds like some neighbors didn’t like that, either.

Too, some folks in MOVE made speeches with bullhorns. A lot. At all times of day.

And there were rumors that MOVE was “amassing weapons.”

Not entirely clear whence that rumor came, but it’s not a wild one. There had previously been an armed stand-off between MOVE and Philly police in which a police officer died. (Nine MOVE members, including Mike Africa Jr.’s mother, were sentenced 30 to 100 years each for the officer’s death. MOVE maintains that the officer was killed by friendly fire and that all nine members were wrongfully convicted.)

So, neighbors weren’t happy.

They asked the city for help dealing with MOVE.

Here’s where I wave my hands like a Muppet and shout: MEDIATION! RESTORATIVE JUSTICE! CONFLICT RESOLUTION!

Oh, to have a time machine.

(Also: can you imagine if there was a neighborhood listserv back then?)

Muppet arms — waving to a big, full, beautiful toolkit of nonviolent strategies for mediating neighbor disputes; a bounty of processes for addressing neighbors’ concerns.

Did the city of Philly pursue de-escalation, nonviolent conflict resolution, restorative processes?

Mmm, here’s a hint: no.

The city told MOVE to move out of their own home or else.

MOVE said, Nah.

And here let’s pause.

Let me ask you: would you obey an eviction notice to vacate your own home because your neighbors were complaining? Because the city didn’t like the way you composted, your beliefs, and the noise you make? Would you move out of the home you own? Come on.

Shit went bad as it tends to do when people making ultimatums have the power of the state behind them. And are heavily armed.

In the wee hours of May 13, the city quietly evacuated MOVE’s neighbors.

Then: 500 (!!) police surrounded the MOVE home.

Remember: children were living in the home along with their adult carers.

The police were armed like whoa with all sorts of firearms.

They told MOVE to surrender.

MOVE again said Nah.

The response, which, again, could have been any number of nonviolent paths instead of what came next: in under 90 minutes, Philly police fired over 10,000 rounds of ammunition at a home with children inside.

The MOVE folks stayed in their home despite this barrage of bullets.

So the mayor, or police commissioner, or both (I’m not sure; different sources say different things) said to bomb them.

A state helicopter dropped a C4 bomb onto the house.

(The C4 came from the FBI.)

The explosion was big.

The MOVE house caught fire.

The police commissioner had, reportedly, told the Fire Department to let the MOVE house burn.

The fire department let the fire burn for 30-45 minutes before fighting the fire.

This killed 11 beloved souls - including 5 children.

Ramona Africa, one of the two survivors of the bombing, says police shot people trying to escape.

The subsequent fire destroyed 61 additional homes over two city blocks. It left 250 neighbors homeless.

Members of MOVE suffered immeasurable losses, unfathomable grief.

Imagine losing 11 people you dearly love, who you were indescribably close to, in one day.

Imagine that five of them were children.

Children like yours: who played and sassed and loved and hugged and laughed and cried.

Here’s Mark Africa, Jr., again:

Mike Africa Jr. remembered Tree, the 14-year-old [killed in the bombing], as being sensitive and brave. “When we would be at the park, especially if we went to a new park, she would run, scour the park, for the biggest tree. The biggest tree. So she could climb it. And no one, no one could climb higher than she could. She didn’t have any fear about the height. It seemed like the higher she went, the more comfortable she was. She never feared the way up . . .”

Justice - what does that mean?

Were the mayor, police commissioner, or anyone in their departments held to account for bombing and killing its citizenry, for leveling a city block, for leaving 250 Philadelphians homeless?

I’ll give you a hint: no.

“Despite two grand jury investigations and a commission finding that top officials were ‘grossly negligent’, no police officers or city officials were ever charged for their role in what’s known as the MOVE bombing.” - Teen Vogue

And.

That’s not all.

To add insult to killing…

It came to public light in 2021 that an anthropologist at the Penn Museum kept the bones of two of the girls killed that day after helping the city identify them.

He and another anthropologist at the Penn Museum kept these beloved, ached-for bones of CHILDREN “for study.” He then took them with him when he got a professorship at Princeton University — for “additional research. [These bones of beloved, cherished children] were transferred back and forth between Penn and Princeton for over 35 years.”

One of the Penn professors had used the bones in a forensic science video as recently as 2021.

All of this without the knowledge or consent of the children’s families.

My God. All of it: the attempts to force eviction instead of mediating conflicts; the siege and barrage of weapons; the bomb that murdered 11 people.

And then this.

To treat these sweet children’s bones this way.

As if they weren’t, aren’t, the sacred bones of beloved, snow-loving, tree-climbing children who were cherished by their families.

As if they weren’t, aren’t, bones aching to be laid to rest by echo-aching survivors.

Can you imagine.

It is desecration on top of devastation.

‘At a press conference in 2023, Ramona Africa, the sole living adult survivor from the MOVE bombing, said that the Penn Museum has "abused those remains, they have refused to give us those remains, the bones."’

And if you’re wondering, the answer is no. Neither Penn nor Princeton fired the anthropologists who kept these bones in a cardboard box in their lab, who used them without permission in upbeat teaching videos.

Annnd we’re still not done.

In 2024, the Penn Museum made another announcement: they had found more bones. Beloved Delisha Africa. Her sacred bones had been “tucked away in an archive.”

Delisha.

According to Mark Africa, Jr., ‘Delisha’s claim to fame was pilfering snacks from the adults, or money to buy them with.

“She was like the person that you enjoy getting in trouble with,” Africa Jr. said. He was always getting caught, he said — not as smart as his playmate. “And Delisha would be looking at me shaking her head. As if to say, you have a lot to learn, grasshopper.”’

Yes, Delisha. We have a lot to learn.

Rest in power, beloved soul.

Beloved souls.

XOXO