A survivor’s tale: Mike Africa Jr.’s ‘On a Move’ tells the story of the MOVE bombing

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Nearly four decades after the MOVE bombing, survivor Mike Africa Jr.’s new book, “On a Move,” gives a first-person account of life after the tragedy, the history of the MOVE Organization and Africa Jr.’s fight to free his parents from prison.

Africa Jr. discussed the new release Thursday with journalist and professor Linn Washington Jr. at the Charles Library on the campus of Temple University. When asked why he wrote the book during an interview with WHYY News, Africa Jr. said, “Because it needed to be done.”

“The history of MOVE has been around for 50 years and nobody did it before,” Africa Jr. said. “The idea of it never being done, it didn’t make sense to me, so I felt like it had to be done.”

On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a military-grade bomb on the home of the MOVE Organization at 6221 Osage Ave. The fire that followed was left to burn, killing 11 people, including five children. Sixty-one homes were razed across two blocks of a predominantly Black neighborhood.

Nine members of the MOVE Organization were convicted for their involvement in a police shootout that killed Officer James Ramp. The MOVE 9 have always insisted they are innocent. Africa Jr.’s work to free those incarcerated began in 2016. In June and October 2018, Africa Jr.’s parents, Debbie and Mike Africa Sr., became the first two of the MOVE 9 to be released from prison.

“I carried the torch to free the MOVE 9 and that’s kind of where my story picks up at [in the book],” Africa Jr. said. “My journey in it is there just so people get an understanding of who I am, but the bigger story is the bomb, the sentencing of nine people for a crime they didn’t commit, you know, that type of stuff.”

‘Purged out of local memory’

Washington Jr. said he had covered MOVE as a journalist for more than four decades and was on the ground when the bombing happened. He told WHYY News that day has been “conscientiously purged out of local memory and thus national memory.”

“The coverage has been a mile wide, meaning there’s been a lot of coverage, but it was only an inch thick,” Washington Jr. said. “It was stopped at a superficial level.”

He said that no one really gave context to the MOVE story, the organization and the dynamics within and outside.

“I mean, like when we’re talking about Aug. 8, 1978, there is clear and convincing evidence that the bullet that killed the officer did not emerge from the basement,” he said.

Yvonne Orr, the daughter of Delbert Africa, one of the nine convicted, attended Thursday night’s event. She reflected on her memories of what happened in Powelton Village on that day 46 years ago. She was attending grade school in Chicago when a teacher tried to pull her aside to tell her the news.

“I caught the flash on the black-and-white TV,” Orr said. “I was just like, ‘That’s Daddy!’ And I just remember screaming. For me, today is the 46th anniversary of the very first time he was taken from me and that’s exactly how I look at it.”

With the book’s release this week, Orr hopes it will inform new generations who have never heard of MOVE’s history.

“What I hope this book will do is put us on notice in a different kind of way just to make us aware,” Orr said. “And sometimes that awareness seems to draw up reflective thought that seems to draw up some type of action toward it, and then it brings about generational change, and that’s what I hope it will do.”

“It’s Philadelphia history,” Africa Jr. said. “It’s Black history. It’s revolutionary history. It’s American history. There are so many categories that it fits in, and I think it will highlight and illuminate a lot of the dark crevices that the system has tried to keep dark.”

“On a Move” is available now in both hardcover and audiobook formats.