Mike Africa Jr. sat in his office in West Philadelphia, his hands resting on the table, his gaze steady and straight ahead. “I saw smoke, and a friend of mine said, ‘They dropped a bomb on MOVE.’ And I just immediately dismissed him. Like, ‘No they didn’t’.”

Forty years ago today, Philadelphia became known as the city that bombed itself.

The bombing, which has come to be seen as one of the darkest days in the city’s history, began as a tense standoff between city officials and a back-to-earth Black liberation organization called MOVE over neighborhood noise complaints. It ended with the brutal deaths of 11 MOVE members, five of whom were children.

Africa, now 46, was only 6 years old when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on 6221 Osage Avenue, MOVE’s then-headquarters. But he remembers everything. “I knew something was happening because in the house people were moving funny.… I went in [my grandma’s] house to find out what was up. And I saw them watching the news.”

“It was a dark day because of what happened,” he added. “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.”

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MOVE (which is not an acronym) was founded in 1973 by Mike Africa Jr.’s great uncle, John Africa, born Vincent Lephart. In some ways, it was decades ahead of its time. Africa shunned modern technology and cultural norms. He believed that the liberation of Black Americans required a total rejection of what he called the “system.” Africa’s followers wore their hair in dreadlocks, followed a raw diet, and repudiated modern amenities like central heating and gas ovens. Like their leader, they also adopted the last name of Africa. The group quickly became known for its nonviolent, though often disruptive, protests around the city. MOVE positioned itself against any organization viewed to be in opposition of the nature-based lifestyle they upheld: Protests were held at pet stores, political rallies, and zoos, to name a few.

The organization first settled in a house in Powelton Village, West Philadelphia. It was there that the first community disputes arose. Neighbors reported that MOVE’s compost system caused a putrid smell to waft through the street, attracting mice and rats. More troublingly, some alleged that members of the organization made threatening remarks to residents, who complained to the city.

In 1977, tensions escalated further when Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, who regarded the group as a “terrorist” organization, dispatched city health inspectors to the MOVE house. There they were met and barred from entry by beret-wearing, gun-wielding MOVE members. Though no one was harmed, the Philadelphia police department set up a 24-hour surveillance of the house, and MOVE members barricaded themselves inside for nearly a year following the initial standoff. It was the beginning of what would become a long, and painful, relationship between MOVE and the city.

By 1982, MOVE had relocated to the 6221 Osage Avenue row-house where John Africa and ten others would eventually be killed. Shortly thereafter, Wilson Goode was elected as the first Black mayor of Philadelphia. Two years later, he would watch as his own police, televised, dropped a two-pound satchel bomb on a row house containing children.

By the time of the relocation, two other people had already died during MOVE-related confrontations: Police Officer James J. Ramp, and an infant, Life Africa.

Life was only three weeks old when he died in 1976. His mother, Janine Africa, later told The Philadelphia Inquirer that she’d been holding her newborn when a police officer shoved her to the ground during a scuffle between the department and MOVE. She said that the infant was crushed beneath her. No police officer was charged in the death, and only a limited investigation into the incident took place.

In 1978, violent confrontation came to a head following an eviction notice from the city. In an ensuing gun battle between MOVE and the police department, veteran Officer Ramp was shot to death. Two other police officers, as well as three firefighters, were shot and wounded. Nine MOVE members, including Mike Africa Jr.’s mother, were sentenced up to 100 years each for Ramp’s death. MOVE maintains that the officer was killed by friendly fire and that all nine members were wrongfully convicted.

In the wake of Life Africa’s death and the imprisonment of nine of their members, MOVE became increasingly hostile toward the police. By the early 1980s, neighbors on Osage Avenue reported nearly round-the-clock bullhorn speeches, often laced with vulgar language disparaging city officials as well as anyone else MOVE saw as a part of the “system.” Nearby residents said the noise and disruption made daily life chronically unpleasant.

“It was one thing to be two blocks away and hear it,” Lloyd Wilson, an Osage Avenue resident who lived in the rowhouse next to MOVE, recounted later in a public hearing. “But to live next door, full blast in our bedroom—I watched my wife many nights lay there in that bed and cry. Wasn’t nothing else she could do.”

Mike Africa Jr. remembers the growing friction well. “It feels like it was born into me,” he recalled. “I remember the tension before I remember the people. Tension from neighbors. Tension from the police. Tension from other family members.”

Residents of Osage Avenue had, without success, asked the city government to intervene. But it was not until MOVE began to set up a wooden bunker, outfitted with holes for gun ports, that action was taken. In a highly publicized meeting with the governor of Pennsylvania, community members made a desperate appeal to the city. It worked. On Mother’s Day, May 12, 1985, Mayor Goode gave the go-ahead to the city’s police department to remove John Africa and his followers from 6221 Osage Avenue.

Pete Kane was an NBC10 cameraman at the time. As residents near Osage Avenue were being evacuated by the police, Kane hid in the house next door to MOVE, offering the residents compensation in exchange for allowing him to remain as the confrontation began.

“They [the police] never knew I was in the house,” he said, recalling the hours before the bombing. “So what I went through for the next couple of hours were tow trucks coming through the block, towing the cars away, the electric company coming through, killing power on the block to the homes. And then the bullhorn. The police on the bullhorn negotiating with MOVE about coming out [of] the house.”

On the morning of May 13, at 6 am, gunfire was exchanged between the police and MOVE. “My son at that time was only three weeks old,” Kane said, his voice cracking slightly as he recounted that fearful day. “When [the] gunfire started that morning, and the bullets were whizzing by me, I said to myself, ‘I’m not gonna see Chris grow up.’”

But Kane stayed in the house, motivated by what he said was his journalistic responsibility to bear witness to the police force’s actions. “ My TV station kept calling me saying, ‘the police are calling us. They [don’t] know what house you’re in and [want to] make sure you’re safe.’ I said, ‘Eff them.’ I was not going to give up my location. Because everything I shot would’ve been destroyed. And I wasn’t gonna do it. [I] would’ve stayed to the end [even] if I had died.”

By early afternoon, the police department had sprayed tear gas, jet-streamed gallons of water onto the MOVE house’s roof, and fired “over 10,000 rounds of ammunition…at a row house containing children,” as is reported in the city’s 1986 investigation into the incident. And then at 5:27 pm, barely more than 24 hours since the operation began, with the approval of Mayor Goode, a helicopter flew over the MOVE house, dropping a bomb made out of tovex and C-4 and assembled by Philadelphia police.

“All of a sudden the house shook,” Kane recalled. It was only moments after the bomb had been dropped that “ the fire started spreading. The homes on either side started to burn. It’s heavy black smoke, and no water was put on it.”

Only two people inside of 6221 Osage Avenue survived the bombing and subsequent fire: Birdie and Ramona Africa. Birdie was only 13 years old when he ran out of an alleyway, naked, to escape the burning rowhouse. According to his account, as well as Ramona’s, police gunfire rained on the members as they tried to escape with their hands in the air and without wielding any weapons. Birdie was forced to leave his siblings behind in the inferno.

“What bothers me to this day,” Kane says, “is I hear police officers outside my window saying, ‘They’re coming out the back. They’re coming out the back.’ And that’s when I hear more gunfire.”

By the end of the day, Katricia (14), Delisha (12), Zanetta (12), Phil (12), and Tomaso (9), as well as John Africa, Rhonda Africa, Theresa Africa, Frank Africa, Conrad Africa, and Raymond Africa, perished in the fire. In addition to those killed, 61 homes were destroyed, rendering more than 250 Philadelphians homeless.

In April of 2021 the local news site Billy Penn, operated by Philadelphia’s public media station WHYY, reported that the Penn Museum had kept, and at points misplaced, the remains of two of the MOVE children, Katricia and Delisha, despite knowing that both victims had living next-of-kin. It was later reported that the remains had been used as examples in online lectures run by the museum as recently as 2021.

But the mishandling of the bodies dates back to the bombing itself. In its initial aftermath, a crane had been used to dig up the remains not only of the victims but of animals as well, leading to a “comingling of remains and six bones—both human and animal,” according to the report. Beyond being profoundly disrespectful, the careless handling of the bodies also seriously compromised future forensic investigations.

Eventually the remains, which forensic scientists claimed to be unable to properly identify, were transferred to a lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the years, their existence was seemingly forgotten by the city altogether, though officials claimed the remains had been cremated following WHYY’s reporting—without the knowledge or consent of the families. They then backtracked, saying the remains were still intact.

Penn Museum claimed that all known remains were returned in 2021. But in November 2024, the museum discovered the remains of Delisha Africa, which had been tucked away in an archive.

Rachel Watkins, a visiting associate professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, is currently the curator for the Biological Anthropology section of the Penn Museum. She is part of a team that works on re-inventorying archived remains, including those of the MOVE children. She takes the gesture as an attempt to rectify the museum’s wrongs of the past.

“[That the] museum was willing to hire someone with my background, shows to me that they are committed to change,” she told The Nation. “In a matter of months these remains were recovered, to me that means that the [new] system is working.”

The museum hasn’t been alone in trying to make amends. In 1990, the city paid $2.5 million in wrongful-death settlements to the families of the children. In 1991, Birdie Africa, who subsequently went by the name Michael Moses Ward, received a settlement of $840,000, along with a lifetime monthly payment, from the city. Ward passed away in 2013.

In 1996, a federal judge awarded Ramona Africa, one of the survivors, $1.5 million in damages related to the bombing.

In the 40 years since the bombing, Mike Africa Jr. hasn’t given up trying to memorialize the people killed that day. Three years ago, he set up a GoFundMe account to try to raise funds to repurchase 6221 Osage Avenue, which was rebuilt in 2020.

When asked what he would like to do with the reclaimed home, Africa told The Nation he “want[ed] to make a bronze memorial, with the names, and the birth dates and death dates…to honor the people that were killed. And also, I want to make a memorial for the people that lost their property and their possessions that day. I think they’re overshadowed because people died. So it’s kind of like, how do you compare property to people? If 60 homes had burned down and nobody died, the 60 homes, the jewelry, the wedding pictures, the children’s posters on the refrigerator, that you can never get back, [would be remembered].”

According to the GoFundMe, Africa has raised more than $22,000, but he still needs over $350,000 to fully “reclaim Osage,” as his fundraising page describes it.

“Eleven people died and no official was punished for it. The government got away with murder. And if MOVE wasn’t facing and fighting an injustice within their own community, the bombing would’ve never happened,” he said. “That’s what problems do. If they’re not solved, they create another problem.”