History that We Should All Be Aware Of: The Time the US Government Bombed their Own Citizens

For many of us, it is almost unimaginable to consider a government turning the full might of the army on its civilians, dropping bombs on a street where families live, breathe, eat, work, and raise their children.

But that is exactly what happened on the 13th May 1985, when the police force dropped a bomb ‘of the sort widely deployed in Vietnam’ on the home of the black activist group, MOVE.

By the next morning, 61 homes had been burnt to the ground, 250 Philadelphian citizens were left homeless, and 11 people, including 5 children aged between seven and thirteen, were dead.

Who are MOVE?

The group has been described as a ‘fusion of black power and flower power’, they were founded in 1972 by John Africa (born Vincent Leaphart). Members took the surname Africa to ‘signal their commitment to race equality as well as to each other as a family’. Their politics focussed on black liberation and environmentalism.

Janine Africa, a member of MOVE says of the group: ‘We demonstrated against puppy mills, zoos, circuses, any form of enslavement of animals. We demonstrated against Three Mile Island [nuclear power plant] and industrial pollution. We demonstrated against police brutality. And we did so uncompromisingly. Slavery never ended, it was just disguised.’

What went wrong?

In the run up to that fateful day in 1985, tensions had been building around the home of the group. They were known to blast their revolutionary messages through loudspeakers at all hours of the day and night, keep lots of animals, and neighbours complained of the smell of garbage and compost from their residence. Their methods of protest also caused offence as they were angry, loud, and profane, and they had increasingly violent encounters with the police in the years and months leading up to the bombing.

These tensions reached a head after they had repeatedly refused to respond to an eviction notice. Eventually, a standoff ensued. Residents living on the same block as the building were evacuated from their homes and told to take some clothes and a toothbrush as they would be back home again by the next day. Then the police moved in.

Nearly 500 police officers were dispatched to the scene, armed as if for combat with SWAT gear, tear gas, and even machine-guns. The stand-off lasted all day with warnings shouted to the members via loudspeakers and shots exchanged between the police and the residents of the building.

(And by shots exchanged, I mean someone shot at the police from inside the house and they responded with over 10,000 rounds of ammunition and a series of explosions attempting to blast into the side of the house.)

A fatal decision

Finally, Mayor Wilson Goode’s order to ‘seize control of the house… by any means possible’ led to the fatal decision to drop a bomb over the residence. Almost immediately, a fire caught hold on the roof and quickly spread across an entire block of this black, middle-class neighbourhood.

Only two survivors made it out of the burning building, Ramona Africa and a young boy named Birdie Africa. Ramona explains that the group huddled down in the basement, believing it to be the safest place to wait out the gunfire and teargas. She describes the whole building rocking when the bomb was dropped stating: ‘We didn’t know that they had dropped a bomb. I mean, why would it even enter our minds that they had dropped a bomb on our home’.

Africa has long maintained that the group made an attempt to escape the building at this point only to be shot at by the police and forced back into the house. This has always been vehemently refuted by the police force.

Not the first time

Sadly, the 1985 bombing was not the first government siege on the MOVE group. In 1978, a siege on their residence had tragic consequences. A police officer, James Ramp, was killed amidst the gunfire. An accident which MOVE members have always maintained that they were not responsible for. Nine members of the group were arrested as a result of his death, despite little evidence, and spent over 40 years in prison, the last member only being released in February this year.

Janine Africa, one of the MOVE 9, who spent four decades in prison, learned of her son’s death in the 1985 bombing while behind bars. She had previously lost a month-old baby when her daughter, Life Africa, was knocked out of her arms during a struggle with police, suffering a fatal head injury.

Wilson Goode, mayor of the city at the time, who approved of the bombing has since apologised on multiple occasions but there has still never been a formal apology from the city. Members of this groups lost their lives, their children, and decades of their freedom as a result with clashes with the police. And yet the group lives on.

2020 marks the 35th anniversary of the MOVE bombing and the first time that the family will be able to commemorate their fallen friends as a group since the tragedy occurred.