Forty years ago today, the city of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on itself.
The city of Philadelphia let that fire burn for more than a day while firetrucks and firefighters stood watching the flames destroy 61 homes, decimating an entire city block in a predominantly Black middle-class neighborhood. The city of Philadelphia left 250 residents homeless in the wake of that fire. But before that, the city of Philadelphia murdered John Africa, Rhonda Africa, Theresa Africa, Frank Africa, Conrad Africa, Raymond Africa, Tomaso Africa (9), Netta Africa (12), Little Phil Africa (12), Tree Africa (14), and Delisha Africa (12).
The city of Philadelphia murdered six adults and five children to protect itself from MOVE, a Black liberationist religious community city officials and law enforcement deemed a “cult.” And then the city of Philadelphia self-immolated and left those murdered bodies mouldering in a city morgue for six months.
Remembering MOVE
MOVE Commission chairman William Brown called May 13, 1985 “one of the most devastating days in the modern history of the city,” but many Americans don’t know much about MOVE, John Africa, or much else beyond the bombing. The story has become more widely known in the last 10 years, starting with Gene Demby narrating his own discovery that Philadelphia law enforcement dropped an IED on a city block. (I’m a kid from Philly whose dad used to overturn benches in Clark Park. I spent the first years of my life in Upper Darby and Havertown—you can trace my family’s line of white flight right through Osage Avenue—and Demby’s 2015 article was the first I’d heard of the bombing.)
Many more learned about the bombing after Abdul-Aliy Muhammad broke the story of Penn anthropologist Alan Mann, without the knowledge or consent of their surviving family members, collecting the remains of Tree and Delisha Africa in the wake of the bombing, of Mann taking their remains with him to Princeton in 2001, of curator Janet Monge using their remains in a 2019 Coursera series entitled “REAL BONES: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology.”
Penn’s Anthropology Department “condemn[ed], in no uncertain terms, the possession and use of these remains in teaching and student work,” but Penn also “discovered” it was still in possession of Delisha Africa’s remains in November of last year. Although the Museum claims on its Towards a Respectful Resolution* page that “this information was immediately communicated with the Africa Family mothers” and that “reuniting these remains with the family is in process as we await their wishes,” Delisha’s family subsequently called a press conference in December of 2024 to, among other things, demand the return of her remains. (According to the Internet Archive, the latter part of the above statement, about reuniting Delisha’s remains with her family, appears to have been added to the Museum’s periodically updating page sometime during the first week of April 2025.)
In her elegiac Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe argues that “the answer to these obscene questions” raised by the unethical, undignified theft of the Africa children’s remains is simple: “Return the bones. Return the photographs. Empty the museums.”
“Her name was Delisha,” Sharpe writes. “Her name is Tree. ‘They came from people; they came from people that came from people.’ And they were loved.”
With Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, Dr. Lyra Monterio and others continue to agitate for Penn to make real and meaningful reparations to MOVE survivors and descendants as part of the Finding Ceremony initiative. Mike Africa Jr. is raising funds to purchase the rowhome built on the remains of the original 6221 Osage Ave and create a memorial to those lost in the bombing. Philadelphia Printworks created some amazing t-shirts to commemorate MOVE’s resistance efforts. (See if you can spot the one I teach in.) The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also released an excellent podcast series, The Africas v. America, in 2023.
Slowly but surely, Philadelphia and America are learning to remember MOVE.
MOVE as religion
But—despite Ramona Africa’s emphatic testimony during the MOVE Commission’s hearings, despite MOVE’s sacred text and charismatic leader, despite the group’s initial founding as the Christian Movement for Life—very few remember MOVE as a religion or the bombing as an act of violent, state-sponsored and authorized religious intolerance. Gerald Africa said “they just spit all over our religion like our religion didn’t count.”
In his outstanding MOVE: An American Religion, Richard Kent Evans proposes that “religion is a category of privilege, the ramifications of which, in MOVE’s case, were literally life and death.” Philadelphia’s failure or unwillingness to recognize MOVE as legitimate religion, to insist on treating MOVE as a dangerous cult, made it possible for the city to murder six adults and five children, to burn down a city block in the name of public safety.
If we are to remember the victims of the MOVE bombing and the unspeakable devastation in its wake, our memorials must account for MOVE People’s understanding of themselves: a radical Black liberationist movement rooted in the religious teachings of John Africa, dedicated to life and nature.
MOVE people were not perfect victims. They were disruptive neighbors. They aggressively proselytized, using bullhorns to blast their philosophy at all hours of the day and night (including one memorable late-night tirade against Santa Claus on Christmas Eve). Their natural waste management strategies attracted insects and vermin. They dug up sidewalks and openly brandished firearms in an up-and-coming respectable West Philadelphia neighborhood. Former members have alleged abuse and left the organization.
But here’s the thing about constitutional protections: they don’t only extend to people you like. (No matter what that Nosferatu-looking ghoul…sorry, I meant Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tells Fox News.) In a moment where the Trump administration is determined to limit First Amendment protections to white Christian nationalism, it’s more important than ever to expand our understanding of religion to include those communities and individuals who unsettle that understanding.
MOVE people deserve to be remembered in the full complexity of their humanity. And we who remember them forget the stakes of “religion” at our own peril.
Correction 5/14/25: An earlier version of this post indicated that the Penn Museum’s “Toward a Respectful Resolution” page had been removed. In fact, the original page was taken down and reposted at a new URL.
