Bombing Of Osage
Director: Louis Massiah
Duration: 00:57:26; Aspect Ratio: 1.424:1; Hue: 32.224; Saturation: 0.122; Lightness: 0.274; Volume: 0.148; Cuts per Minute: 10.689; Words per Minute: 136.968
Summary: Confrontation between Philadelphia Police and members of the MOVE organization in 1985.
On Mother's Day, 1985, a virtual army of city and state police converged on a quiet block in historic Cobb's Creek, a blossoming neighborhood of parks and children, aluminum siding and basketball stars nestled in the heart of Philadelphia's African American community. By the next day, 61 homes were destroyed and 11 people were dead, all members of the communitarian MOVE organization. In this, the winner of 1987's Global Village "Best Documentary Award", Massiah establishes the setting for the tragedy early on, and Toni Cade Bambara's poetic narration draws us deeper into the drama.
Neighbors recall the coming of MOVE members, unusual in their back-to-nature lifestyle, and the incidents -- including trash thrown into their yards and profanities blasting over loudspeakers -- which caused their relationship with the community to deteriorate almost immediately. Eventually the close-knit community called on city officials to deal with MOVE members, unwittingly opening a Pandora's Box. The bombing referred to in the documentary's title was ordered by the Philadelphia police with the acquiescence of then-mayor, W. Wilson Goode, shortly after a 90-minute gun battle with 500 hundred city police officers ensued.
Of all the television hours devoted to this internationally infamous event, Massiah's documentary is possibly the first to look at the real human loss, not only in the deaths that include a number of MOVE children, but the proud community of families that survived race wars and gang wars, only to be nearly destroyed by its own city.
At the start of the film, with cheerful music like from an old TV show, the director shows Cobbs Creek residents speaking positively about their community. This is done to create a clear contrast with the chaos and destruction that follows during the conflict between the police and MOVE, and the bombing.
Music: Marvin Gaye, Right On.
This is a telling choice. It's a song of healing, and feeling good as a community, living in peace, and loving. It comes back at the end of the film. Marvin Gaye's more political What's going on? is also used for a very brief 3 seconds - "Mother Mother...". The choice of song reflects the intent of the Scribe film - its focus was not MOVE, and their philosophy, nor was it about looking at systemic police violence on Black communities; rather it was about the aspirations and normalcy of a community that had MOVE as it's neighbours and whose fabric was ruptured by the bombing of Osage. It almost feels like the film needs "What's going on?" Both the song and a position on MOVE.
Cobbs Creek
It's not like downtown where they have a lot of stores and tall buildings.
You can tell that you're going back into another neighborhood.
Earl Watkins, talks about the neighbourhood of 6200 Osage Avenue.
We love the park.
We live right near Cobbs Creek.
And we go down there and have a picnic and things like that.
We may not run into everyone's house, but we're all neighbors and we know each other.
On 60th Street, you could go anywhere along the street and buy whatever you wanted.
They had all different types of stores.
You didn't have to go into Center City for anything.
Like, you would come past 58th and Walnut and come past Sayre Junior High and say, oh, I know where I'm at now.
You know, you come past 60th Street, oh, yeah, I know where I'm at and everything.
You know, the House of the Roll Homes, you know, up and down the block, you would notice that it's just changing to a different neighborhood.
Toni Cade Bambara
This footage establishes a sense of the local community in the Cobbs Creek area / Osage Avenue and the voiceover denotes that the film is narrated through the lens of someone within the community. However, the narration is often poetic and abstract in the film, with occasional exposition.
Music: Marvin Gaye, Right On. Toni Cade Bambara's voice and script. "community on the Edge of Hell".
When you're part of a community, at home in the rhythms and the rituals of a place, you don't imagine that you're living on the edge of hell.
Sunday morning, we knew something was going to happen because they said we'd have to vacate and they were going to turn off the gas and electricity.
May 12th, they called me up in the morning and said, this is the city police department.
We would like you to vacate your premises by 10 o'clock tonight because we have reason to believe there's going to be gunfire in your neighborhood.
And I said, by whom?
And they said from the MOVE members around the corner.
So I told them, no, wait one minute.
This is Mother's Day and I'm not going anyplace.
And no sooner we got finished breakfast, I heard this bang, bang, bang, shooting.
And the ladies downstairs started hollering, hit the floor.
And I hit the floor because it sounded like they were coming straight through the house.
And then the only thing I could think about was my baby was upstairs in the room.
So I crawled up the steps, drug him out the bed, into the closet.
You know, I just kept going, then it stopped for a while, then it started back up.
I mean, it was, it was like war.
I saw when our house was caught.
The first house on the south side, they get caught.
And that's, oh my gosh, our house is on fire.
And it was very depressing.
It was just like a movie, a story.
You just couldn't believe it, you know, just happening right before your eyes.
And I said, I don't believe this.
You know, how you do to stand there and look and to think you're just so helpless.
Laverne Sims
My heart is very heavy.
Leverne Sims, formal move member, sister of John Africa speaking her feelings. She also did testimony in Let the fire burn
I feel for those people.
I loved each and every one of them that was murdered.
My blood, as well as the children who was not my blood.
But I felt that they were my children because I had been so close to them through the years when I was a MOVE member.
Move member
They've stayed at my house.
I've stayed with them in Virginia.
And it's just hard.
Toni Cade Bambara
Mother's Day, like so many historical precedents, was set in Philadelphia, 1907.
The following year, the tradition of wearing carnations, red flowers for the living, and white.
This is Mother's Day.
Mother's Day, May 12th, 1985.
The Cobbs Creek community is put on red alert.
The following day, May 13th, armed troops occupy the neighborhood to evict members of the organization known as MOVE.
bombing
You understand what I'm saying?
Why should they blow the kids up?
Why you got to hurt them?
There's kids in there.
You tell my children in there all day, all night.
Why you got to hurt the kids?
Think about the children.
Think about the children.
Toni Cade Bambara
Voice and script by
Toni Cade Bambara
What industry is this?
Theme of displacement from the neighborhood
Your home, a blazing smoke stack belching up your prized possessions, neighborhood of free-fire zone and people killed.
The author's perspective is reflected in this segment, as well as through the interview subjects chosen for the film. It primarily explains the conflict between MOVE and the police, and the impact of the bombing at MOVE house at 6221 Osage Avenue, from the viewpoint of local Cobbs Creek residents, showing how it affected the broader community.
Incident.
displacement
The film focuses on the impact of the MOVE bombing on the community that was displaced
Officialese for 11 people dead, 61 homes destroyed, 100 other houses wrecked, 250 residents made refugees and relocated.
Begins with the statistics as a result of the bombing: 11 people dead, 61 homes destroyed, 100 other houses wrecked, 250 residents made refugees and relocated.
LaVerne Sims, sister of John Africa (born Vincent Leaphart), the founder of MOVE. On her left, is her sister Louise James. Sims and James were former members of MOVE.
displacement
On a wildlife preserve, the dismemberment of a community, the relation of a people to a place, ruptured.
John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System, a network of lands set aside for the benefit of native wildlife and plants. In 1972 local activism brought about legislation in Congress authorizing the protection up to 1,200 acres of the Tinicum Marsh and established the Tinicum National Environmental Center. In 1991, the refuge was renamed posthumously to honor Senator John Heinz and his commitment to the conservation of the marsh.
Toni Cade Bambara
There is a clear contrast in the two scenes displayed here: one of a Black boy standing on his own, on a dock in front of a body of water surrounded by trees; the other of a silhouette of a firefighter against a raging fire. The film then speaks broadly of the history of those who lived and occupied the region, from the Lenape, to European settlers, to enslaved Africans, before jumping ahead to the footage of Charles L. Blockson speaking about the first major migrations of Black Americans during the Underground Railroad and the local history of worker uprisings and clashes between various parties and groups. Most prominently, there was the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838--an abolitionist build center-- by white supremacists.
The Lenape people are the original inhabitants of the lands called Lenapehoking, which are known today as parts of eastern Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey, and southern New York. The broader group was made up of people speaking two distinct languages: Munsee in the upper Delaware River Valley and Unami in the lower Delaware River Valley.
The original people who blessed the land were the Lenni-Lenape, or the Delawares.
indigenous displacement
Eldest nation of the Algonquin Confederacy.
They called the area Kakadikong, place of the wild geese.
They called it home.
Others would come to rename it Carcoyne Creek, Cobbs Creek, would claim it with their guns, their plows, and their dreams.
The Lenape people were forcibly removed from their lands through a series of broken treaties and violent dispossessions. Most notably, the Walking Purchase of 1737 resulted in the dispossession of millions more acres than was originally agreed upon, sparking increased conflict.
Today, Lenape nations include the Delaware Tribe and Delaware Nation in Oklahoma; the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, Ramapough Lenape, and Powhatan Renape in New Jersey; the Stockbridge Munsee Band
of Mohicans in Wisconsin; and the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown and Munsee Delaware in Ontario, Canada.
archival images
portrait of a community
Africans came too, captive, but with dreams of their own.
blacks migration
The major migration started, of course, with the Underground Railroad.
Charles L. Blockson, Curator, Afro-American Collection, Temple University.
curator
Temple University
That was the biggest, largest migration by Blacks in the United States, and Philadelphia played a very important part of it.
However, the early Blacks first came to the city with the Dutch and the Swedes as early as 1639, and later with the English.
Blacks primarily lived all over the city.
Early city directories have been digitized and can be found online at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
https://hsp.libguides.com/c.php?g=1171939 Even more applicable and specific than city directories is the work of W.E.B. Dubois, the sociologist, historian, and activist who investigated the history of Black people in Philadelphia. In addition to what was considered "traditional" research at the time, he worked in the community by going door-to-door and meticulously cataloguing Black people's living situations and occupations. His social study titled "The Philadelphia Negro" was published in 1889, featuring his work and findings.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhpfb
If you check some of the early city directories, those are the directories that indicated what type of labor the people did, what occupation, or where they lived and such.
You would find Black people in the Northern Liberties area, Frankfurt, Southwest Philadelphia.
Movement.
autonomy
The continual struggle to establish autonomous communities.
By 1800, the pattern is set, runaways and free Blacks moving first to already established neighborhoods, often receiving a cool welcome from the old Philadelphia Negro.
Philip Quaque: The African ordained in the Church of England.
The mutual economic and political interdependence acknowledged.
Black working class and Black bourgeoisie settle in.
Then split off to spread out to less congested areas to build again.
Riots and rumors of riots.
The Cobbs Creek Mill District, birthplace of Pennsylvania industries, is caught in the middle.
race violence
Lawless posse is crossing its borders, and the all-out militia in hot pursuit.
Race war, worker uprisings, temperance leagues clashing with bootleggers, the Know-Nothing Party against the foreign-born, against Catholics, posse's against deputized constables.
Out of the riots of the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, the Mill District demands the consolidation of municipal power and services.
The nature of the fire brigades during that period, around the turn of the century and before, was primarily segregated.
Charles L. Blockson provides a comment on historical negligence for fire fighters or fire emergency services in Philadelphia when black homes or the Pennsylvania Hall in 1838, a site of great importance to abolitionists He draws a connection between this historical negligence and the 1985 MOVE bombing and fire.
There was very few Blacks.
It was primarily existed among the neighborhood.
Oftentimes, when a Black home was burned down, members of the brigade took their time in coming out to take care of the fire.
Fire
Fire and the witholding of firefighting services as tools of racial terror
race violence
Pennsylvania Hall, built by abolitionists, opened on May 4th, 1838. Faced with difficulties finding venues for their meetings, abolitionist groups, including the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, banned together and fundraised to create their own building. The building's first event was the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. Protestors burned the building to the ground only three days after it opened its doors.
The burning of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838, one of the most handsome buildings in the city of Philadelphia, built primarily by the abolitionists as a place where they could give lectures and such.
The second day it was opened, it was burned to the ground because of the pro-slavery attitude in Philadelphia.
Police stood by and watched the building burn to the ground, and other incidents where police did not take part in the activities until they really had to.
Police
race violence
Role of the police, the withholding of services as a tool of racial terror.
So, what happened with the mood situation is nothing new in the history of Blacks in Philadelphia.
Nothing new.
May 13, 1838.
Black and white abolitionists prepare for the dedication ceremonies of Pennsylvania Hall.
An angry crowd gathers around their new convention center.
Toni Cade Bambara
Music: Joe Zawinul, The Great Empire.
For four days, appeals are made to the mayor, to the police, to disperse the mob that swells to several thousands.
May 17, Mayor Swift arrives to say, there's no need to call out the militia.
These are well-meaning citizens.
He tells the mob, I look upon you as my police, and exits.
Fire
race violence
The water hoses are trained on adjoining buildings to prevent the fire from spreading.
What happened with the MOVE situation is nothing new in the history of Blacks.
Nothing new.
Notes the long history of thriving Black neighborhoods in America being systematically destroyed by the state. In 1921 (May 31st), 35 square blocks in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, colloquially known as "Black Wall Street" at the time were burned and destroyed by mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city government officials. The mob attacked Black residents and destroyed homes and businesses in the neighborhood. Firebombs were dropped from planes.
May 31, 1921.
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The Negro Wall Street district of the Greenwood neighborhood is bombed from the air after armed Black men rout a lynch mob from the jail.
Whites invade the enviable Black business district, looting, burning, killing.
The police commandeer private planes.
The 101st Airborne is flown in.
A load of dynamite is dropped.
75 instantly killed.
Hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed.
Martial law declared.
Four truckloads of bodies are shoveled into mass graves along the Arkansas River.
Four thousand Black men, women, and children arrested and placed in concentration camps where they're required to carry passes.
The city quickly re-zones the neighborhood so that the railroad can be run through, thus completing the destruction of that neighborhood.
Whether you live in Yadin, or whether you live in West Oak Lane, or whether you live in Cobbs Creek, or wherever you live, or you're just visiting Philadelphia, if you've got the Lord in your heart, he'll make a way somehow.
Cobbs Creek at the time was the largest per-capita home-owning Black residential community in the city of Philadelphia. This clip is followed by footage of residents Nellie Mae James, Gwendolyn Shockley, and Elnora Askew speaking about their time living in the area and recounting when they first moved to Cobbs Creek as young women, as well as the white flight during the 1940s.
The older homes in this community were centered around mill activity, Cobbs Creek.
When this community developed, it developed for working people, blue collar, but then it also developed for persons who were in Center City and working in Center City and needed housing.
middle class
And so it became a bedroom community and kind of a middle class community.
When Blacks moved into the community from north and primarily from south Philadelphia, they had to buy the homes and this became not a renting community, but a homeowning community for the in-migrating community of Blacks.
Cobb's creek was a Black middle class community with a large proportion of home owners.
displacement
It has become the largest per capita homeowning community, Black residential, in the city of Philadelphia.
I'm 88 years old.
In my early days, I lived in north Philadelphia, but when I after I grew up and I got about 19, I was in from 19 on, I was here in the west Philadelphia area.
From horses drawing things to motors and now electric and everything else, I'd been here.
Taxi cabs, those horses drawing, the man sit up on top.
I could tell you something, girl.
My name is Gwendolyn Shockley and I have two pictures of my graduations that I think an awful lot of.
The one with the white dress is my high school graduation and everybody in the class had to make what they wore.
So that's a homemade dress I have on.
And in this picture, I had to stay out a year to get enough money to go because I'm from a family of nine children and everybody who wanted to go away to school had to work for it.
So I chose Cheney because I could easily get home.
What year was I born?
1896.
white flight
And this year was taken 1948 and I don't know exactly when this was.
This is my son.
Well, I came because I didn't have no relatives down south and my son had moved up here.
And so after my last husband passed, I come on up here to be with him.
But talk about changes.
There's been a lot of change in 60th Street since I've been living in there.
All of the white people moved out and the colored people moved in.
When I moved out here in this neighborhood where I'm at, it was mostly black.
So I was more involved in my own people than I was when I was living where I was living before because I was with my own people.
And I got to know so many people and it was a lot of difference to me because when I was in where I was living in South Philadelphia, I didn't get involved in anything.
I would just stay with me and my children.
But there, I was involved in lots of things.
My mother always wanted a porch because she was born in Virginia, which we all were born in Virginia, but she was used to porches.
And then she said she always didn't like to sit on the pavement.
She always said we were sitting in the street.
So she said, well, let's buy a house with a porch.
This has been here since 1927.
The neighborhood is completely white.
And then it started changing about 30 years ago.
It was lively.
There was no empty stores here and no stores with the fronts all covered up and everything.
It was just a beautiful business section.
Monday and Tuesday would be quiet.
And Thursday is the busiest day on the street here, while the neighborhood is mostly Jewish.
And so we have plenty of butcher shops here, baker shops, grocery stores, delicatessen, butter and egg stores.
But when the neighborhood changed, they all took it on the hop.
50 years ago, 61st and Larger, we had a dairy farm there.
Right in the next block, we had a stable there.
And then, of course, the street there, you had the Jewish synagogue.
And right next door to it was a garage.
But on the other side of Chasm Street was the rich people, bootleggers and all, like Boo Boo Hoff and his associates and all.
That was on the other side of Chasm Street down to Cobbs Creek.
And then, of course, I remember the time when the Irish ran the north side here on the other side of Cedar Avenue.
It was nothing but Irish.
And a Jew couldn't cross that boundary line in them days.
If an old man with whiskers was going to synagogue, they'd pull his whiskers and throw them down.
I remember all that.
Social life, 63rd and Ludlow, we had a synagogue.
And then down the basement, they had the auditorium.
We had all kinds of sports and all.
When I moved in here, I had white neighbors on both sides of me.
OK?
One neighbor came out.
In fact, both of them came up, but not simultaneously.
And they said, welcome to the neighborhood, Mr. and Mrs. Lane.
We're delighted to have you here.
If you have any problems or anything, feel free.
We're your neighbors.
I said, thank you very kindly.
And the next morning, I got up, and I saw this moving van out there, moving them out.
After I moved in here, in a matter of several months, the white folks are moving out, and the black folks are moving in.
And they moved from different areas of the city, North Philly, South Philly, West Philly, and some from down south, I understand.
But it was nice, and people were working class people.
And you didn't have time to be tending to everyone else's business.
You know, you had a lot of things to do.
Bennie Swans
Louise James
When we moved to Cobbs Creek area, my family, when we moved to 57th and Baltimore Avenue, back in 1960, the Cobbs Creek area was one of the most exclusive sections in the city for black folks.
Wilk Chamberlain lived down the street.
I mean, that's how great Cobbs Creek was.
And Cobbs Creek has been an area where a flurry of activity, independent politics was born in the Cobbs Creek area.
So we have a very rich history.
When we moved on Baltimore Avenue, there were whites directly south of there.
aspirations
Describes the aspirations for the existence and recognition of a Black middle class community that Cobbs Creek represented.
displacement
middle class
And as they moved out, it did not, in fact, take anything away from the neighborhood.
In fact, it provided a great amount of stability.
That was one of the things that occurred to me.
And I think it did also begin to destroy some of the myths surrounding black folks moving into neighborhoods.
The whole notion of the politics, the whole sense of knowledge of politics in the neighborhood really took hold.
civic
elections
And it was not unusual to find at a recreation center people coming out to expound on black political history or people coming out to expound on voter registration.
When we first moved here, we had barbecue pits out there with benches.
It was very, very nice.
The water, my boys used to swim in it, go fishing.
You'd be surprised how many keys I had to roll their houses, because they knew I was home most of the time.
And the kids come home from school, forget their keys.
They used to come up, I'd give them the keys, and they'd bring them back.
I don't know.
There's many things to remember.
I don't really want to remember all these things.
displacement
Home
But just a lot of little things, putting carpeting down your floor.
You know, you want wall-to-wall carpeting.
You knocked the wall out.
I decided I wanted a false fireplace.
And I didn't like the fireplace they had here.
I just remodeled the whole house, you know, step at a time.
You know, just thing at a time.
Okay.
My main interest was putting up bookcases.
And if you really want to know, putting up all these bookcases, because I loved books.
I decided my son was only three years old.
aspiration
middle class
I'm going to get this book of novels.
Because if I don't, if I had a whole bunch of babies, I envision myself having all these kids.
I said, I want this book of novels, the volume of it.
So in case I start working from having babies, at least they'll have these books of knowledge.
Then it didn't happen.
I went and bought the Encyclopedia Britannica.
And I paid for that.
Then I was just a book person.
And I just filled all my bookcases full of books for young people.
Residents' testimonies about how they changed their homes over time, as well as how embedded they were in the community. Stories about sharing Black political history, getting people registered to vote, barbeque pits, swimming, helping kids who forgot their keys get back into their homes.
And just interesting books.
No pornography.
Good books.
Okay.
And kids would come in and borrow my books.
I've been up and down 60th Street, riding and walking 25 years.
Earle Davis
Police
It was a different street from what it is today.
You had stores from Market Street all the way down to Catherine.
And then I start walking out here 25th of March in 67.
And that was the height of the gang area.
You had the Moon, which was north of Market Street.
You had the Barbara Coast, which was 57th and Lutlow.
You had 58th and Osage, which was at 58th and Osage.
Then you had the Cedar Avenue from down 56th and Cedar.
Those were the major gangs out here at that particular time.
The problem with gangs was going around in a pack, fighting each other.
When you got a gang fight, they don't care who's caught in the middle.
I have had a good relationship with the community.
And I have had a good relationship with a lot of the hood.
Because, see, when I come out here on the corner, 6th and Market is my corner, not the hood.
6th and Market is for the people to walk around, catch the bus and whatnot, which I can't be standing here all the time.
But I don't know.
I always felt like that when you're wrong, you're wrong.
See, I had two sons.
I tried to treat the guys out here like I would have wanted somebody to treat my son.
That's what I tried to do.
And another thing, I never patted nobody on the back to get along with them.
I treat you right.
And I treat you with respect.
And I expect the same from you.
Two years ago, the Barber of Coast and the Moon had a reunion.
Queen Mother Falaka Fattah, founder of the House of Umoja in Philadelphia, a grassroots program initiated by community residents to mediate gang conflicts, organized the New Years Day "No Gang War in 1974" conference. David Fattah, who has been married to Falaka for more than 40 years, wrote the Imani pledge, a ceasefire promise that roughly 80 gangs signed on to by the end of 1974, including members of the West Philadelphia gangs, the Barbary Coast Gang and the Moon Gang. In 2014, former members reunited to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the ceasefire. Effective alternative methods for dealing with community conflicts existed in Philadelphia at the time of the Osage bombing.
And all the guys were about 35, 40 years old now.
And they sent me an invitation.
I didn't know if I was going or not, but I went.
And I got in that place.
They made me feel like I was 20 foot tall, the way they treated me.
When they announced I was there, everybody was yelling.
Nobody would come up to me.
And they wanted to make me feel like I did something right down through the years.
Well, the 60s were very eventful for me because I had a brother who plays basketball.
And I spent a lot of my time going to all those basketball games.
I remember the Black Panthers very vividly.
black Panther Party
describes her memory of and feelings toward the politics of the Black Panther Party
racial politics
Yes, I do.
And work.
Plus, I had a little boy.
I had a baby in the 60s.
61, in fact.
And I was in school at night.
And then I was doing a lot of things.
But the most eventful things was the basketball games.
To be truthful.
And keeping up with this Black Panther movement.
It was fascinating to me.
This was the first black radical group that I've heard of.
You know, I'm not dealing with the slavery days.
I'm dealing with something in the modern day, you know.
And they were so radical.
I mean, they moved, really.
And I never believed in their philosophy.
I won't say I didn't believe in their philosophy.
But I just thought they had a lot of courage to try to fight this system, you know.
And I kept up with North Philly.
They had that house up there.
And, you know.
And I started reading Bobby Eldridge Cleaver's book, Soul and Ice.
And, you know, all these books fascinated me.
Malcolm X Faulk.
You know, he fascinated me from the Muslims.
And I was an avid reader.
So a lot of time reading about these people.
Yeah, and see what they're into.
From the sit-ins, marches, and agitation of the 60s, emerged new formations in the 70s.
Both within the system and outside of the system.
Prior to coming into the MOVE organization, I am the type of person who has always looked for something that would help me to find justice.
In a testimonial, Louise James, a resident of Osage Avenue, recounts their interest in black radical politics of the time, her outrage at the lynching of her neighbourhood member Larry Cross, and the discovery of the teachings of John Africa that resonated with Louise for dealing with the lynching and greater injustice.
MOVE commission
Prior to MOVE I followed Angela Davis.
Louise James
Cobbs Creek as the largrst black residential community in the city of Philadelphia.
Louise James speaking about how she started to believe in John Africa's philosophy and joined the MOVE at the first place.
Louise James speaks at the MOVE Commission, giving insight into her ideals and activism and wanting to respond to the continued violence against Black folks by the Philadelphia police. Speaking about Larry Cross in particular. The clip establishes a sense of who joined MOVE and why.
Larry Cross, who was killed by police brutality not long after he had a confrontation with an officer, but whose death was ruled a suicide:
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/TR/Transcripts/1978_0013T.pdf
MOVE commission
I have never, ever liked the injustice, the prejudice, the oppression in this system.
However, I have never thought of myself as a leader.
But I felt that I could be a good follower.
And because I felt that way, I was constantly seeking out people to follow.
Prior to MUVO, for example, I followed and supported the Panther Party.
I mean, I was just mesmerized by that woman.
I thought she really had it all together.
I thought she was brave and courageous and a black woman with a purpose.
I felt that she had been misused and abused.
I followed both George and Jonathan Jackson.
A brother by the name of Larry Cross was killed.
Lynchings, the violent and public murders of Black people in America, were used to inspire fear and uphold the racial hierarchy through acts of terror.
This brother was going down Vine Street one day and a police officer had stopped and Larry passed a police officer.
When the cop stopped him, he pulled him over and he gave Larry Cross a ticket.
Larry tore up the ticket.
That was his crime.
Somewhere between two to three hours later, that brother was dead.
I mean, he was hung and they said that he had committed suicide and I was outraged.
There was a big meeting at White Rock Baptist Church at 53rd and Chestnut.
Hardy Williams was there and Cecil Moore was there and Dave Richardson was there and the big people were there and little people were there and everybody was gathered because they wanted something done about this brother's murder.
Then at some point, somebody said, okay, the meeting is over.
I remember hearing a voice scream and I didn't even know that it was my own voice until I came back to myself and I realized that it was me.
I was saying, no, this meeting is over.
I said, I will not allow you to have me go out of this meeting as frustrated as I was when I came in.
I said, you're going to have to tell me something.
As I continue to be disillusioned and as I continue to see nothing working in this political system for me, I continue to search.
When I came across the teaching of John Africa, my search ended.
Novella Williams
Novella Williams cross reference
I've been aware of the MOVE organization in West Philadelphia for a number of years because back in 1975 and 1976, the MOVE organization members would visit my office.
Citizens for progress philadelphia
Novella Williams describes why people joined MOVE, describes them as good people who are outside or let down by the system, and says that their portrayal is incorrect.
Novella Williams, from Citizens for Progress Philadelphia, speaks about her personal experience and interactions with the members of MOVE. She is sympathetic to those members who were living outside of the system and "had no place to go" and notes that the way in which they are portrayed by the broader public and the city of Philadelphia-- as "wild animals" is grossly offensive and wrong.
I knew Louise James because Louise's son, Frank James, and my daughter, Kim, attended school at the Mitchell Preparatory School in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
Very brilliant young man, Frank James.
He would come to my house and sit on the steps and we knew him.
I think what happened with some of the people in MOVE, they had no place to go.
They could not find a place.
They were totally, totally out of it when it comes to the system.
They were turned off.
They were looking for a place and MOVE offered that place for them.
The MOVE people, they are intelligent people.
They are basically good people.
And they're not the kind of wild animals that they've been portrayed as.
I knew Louise James and I knew her husband and I knew Frankie when he was just about yea big.
Children
Frankie James
Harry Smeck
Harry Smeck remembers Frankie James joining MOVE and becoming Frankie Africa.
Like MOVE's founder John Africa, members of MOVE would adopt "Africa" as a last name.
He had a little dog he called Buttons.
I used to go to the store on the corner up there and I used to ask him, how's Buttons doing?
He said, okay, very good kid.
So then all of a sudden he disappeared.
I don't know where he went.
But the next thing I saw while he was back in the house was Frankie Africa.
They must have been here at least a year and a half before I was even aware.
Children
I was going out to go to work one day and I saw these two little girls.
It was garbage day.
And I saw these two little kids going through these garbage cans.
You had to put them on the curb.
I said, what the hell is this?
I saw the dreadlocks and the whole bit.
I know I never saw that around here before.
But anyway, you know, first I want to know why they were going to garbage cans and are you hungry?
What's your problem?
This and that and blah, blah, blah.
And they said they were hungry.
And I remember coming in house and whatever little stuff I had, I gave it to him.
Okay.
I went on to work.
So that evening I came home.
My son was in school too.
And I said to Gregory, I saw a couple of little young girls around here.
You know, I heard about that move business and that part of that move, you know, he's the one that told me, Mom, where have you been?
They've been around here for a year.
I never knew it.
I've seen them come around.
nuisance
They, you know, sell like fruit and stuff, you know, watermelon and stuff like that.
But I didn't even know where they live.
My daughter told me, they live right around the corner.
I didn't know that.
You would see the kids, you see the women over on the phone, talking on the phone, guys with their watermelon wagons, you know, carrying dirt, you know, stuff like that.
I used to see the little girls at the corner store with the dreadlocks and I said, his move must be in this area.
I remember Miss Louise living there and I remember her living there by herself until maybe like a couple years after, as far as I know, as long as I've been living there, a couple years after I've lived there, I've seen the move people start to come in.
In Let the Fire Burn at 30:16, it explains that MOVE's headquarters moved from Powelton Village to Louise James' house at 6221 Osage Avenue in 1984. After the move, their primary activity was focused on demanding the release of MOVE members who were imprisoned.
I didn't know too much about them and my friends would say, yeah, they're the move people and at first the kids used to come out and they would talk to us and they would come out there and jump rope and everything and they were friendly, they were very friendly towards us and maybe like a
Children
Neighbor perceptions of the MOVE children
year later or so, all of a sudden they didn't, they stopped playing with us and they would go and play in the back or either go to the park.
What time of the day would you go?
Children
Michael Ward
When the sun go out, come out.
When the sun came up in the morning and how often, how long would you stay down there when you went to the park?
Till we get nighttime.
It's nighttime, so you go out when the sun came up and then you stay there until the sun went down that night.
What did you do in the park during the day?
Swim and used to run and then we used to play.
Swam and was there a pool there?
We went to the creek.
Lloyd A. Wilson gives testimony about the religious affiliations of the Black population in West Philadelphia. He mentions there area Christians, Catholics, Muslims, and his family was Buddhist. They described the initial reception of MOVE on the 6200 Osage block until their further radicalisation and alterations with the house. Lloyd talks of a psychological toll on the neighbourhood residents.
In any predominantly black neighborhood you have a mixture of philosophies.
Osage resident Lloyd A. Wilson talks about when the dynamics between MOVE and the other local residents of Osage began to deteriorate, noting that this shift happened when MOVE boarded up their place of residence and installed the loudspeakers / bullhorns, using them to create disruptions and provoke their neighbors into calling the police, in an attempt to get their incarcerated members freed.
As a matter of fact, most of the people I'd say were, they believed in something.
We had Baptists on the block, people who practiced the Muslim doctrine on the block, Catholics on the block.
My family was a Buddhist family.
The neighbors, you know, would live and let live.
The problem, I think where the problem started is when they extended from their home.
nuisance
If they kept it in 6221 inside the house, in other words, did not force it on the rest of us, I think that people, I could tolerate it.
I'm sure we did tolerate it.
As a matter of fact, there was no problem when the MOVE members first, you know, actually started really practicing their philosophy in the neighborhood.
It didn't really get out of hand until they started boarding up the house.
We all wondered, what's going on?
loudspeaker
They're loudspeakers went up.
After a while, it was a couple of animals, and then more animals, and then more animals, and then more animals, and there's like more food, more food outside.
Then it was a psychological thing they went at.
They said, okay, they haven't moved with this, they're still rather passive people.
Let's psychologically really start dealing with these people.
And that's exactly what they did.
And I think that's where things start really breaking down.
The MOVE members, emotional, or the people in the neighborhood emotionally and psychologically could not deal with it.
So one day, out of curiosity, I opened my back door, went down those steps, and really observed a bunker getting ready to be built, saw the barricades, saw them on the roof of those bullhorns, and in fact, I was really astonished because, I mean, their language wasn't very colorful, you know.
cursing
loudspeaker
And then my son is a very quiet, introverted kind of person, at least on the surface.
So I called him, Gregory, come here, I want you to hear this.
You know, he's not used to me, he never heard me curse, he don't curse.
I said, do you hear these people out here?
So he only stayed there about three or four minutes, because he didn't want to hear that stuff.
They were called all kinds of MFers, he ain't used to that stuff.
So he is, but he's pretending he's not.
But anyway, so I told him then, I said, let me tell you something.
From what I hear them saying, I, listen here, these people, I'm underestimating them.
They are articulate, intelligent people.
I don't want to tell you what they're talking about, but you really not dealing with no dumb bunnies here.
I said that from the day one.
cursing
nuisance
I cannot have respect for no one that don't respect my wife and my children.
And when you got not even my children, anyone's children, they get on and use any kind of profanity.
I can't deal with them.
Lucien Blackwell, boxer, longshoreman, and politician. He served as a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1973 to 1975, Philadelphia City Council from 1975 to 1991, and the United States House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995.
In January 19, the 7th, 1976, I became a member of the City Council of the City of Philadelphia.
Shortly thereafter, members of the MOVE organization came to my office to inquire about some land and some help that they wanted regarding the city.
At that time, they were considered vocal, but peaceful group.
I was invited to come to their home.
I had dinner in their home.
I found that the way they looked in the street was entirely different from the way they lived.
I found that the day that I arrived, that we went inside, everything was clean.
I had learned that maybe a year or so before the confrontation that MOVE people had relocated from 33rd and Pearl to 62nd and Osage Avenue.
1978 shoot-out
At that time, we did not get involved because the community was very supportive of what they were doing.
Shortly thereafter, we began to receive complaints from the neighbors.
On August 8, 1984, I was informed by the mayor that they were going to ensure that no problems would occur as a result of what happened on August 8, 1978, by stationing a large amount of policemen in the area to ensure against any MOVE demonstrations.
1978 shoot-out
nuisance
Children
Ramona Africa
Ramona Africa describes that Mayor Goode plans to kill everyone in the home and put all of the children in foster homes.
What communications happened between the city and MOVE before the attack?
Good plan to kill everybody in this house, all right, everybody.
And those that he didn't kill would be put in jail, and our children would be put in foster homes.
They were on that bullhorn, and they would say there was going to be a day of reckoning come August the 8th.
1978 shoot-out
loudspeaker
nuisance
1978
So I called my son one day.
I said, I'm going to tell you something.
I don't want you home on August the 8th.
I'm coming to Boston, because they're getting ready to start something here, and I'm not going to be around, you know, jokingly, really.
I believed it in him.
I believed it.
I took them seriously, I can tell you that.
And after nothing happened August the 8th, I said, oh, they're just bluffing the city or whatever.
I never thought any more about it.
nuisance
They had the carts at first with their produce on it.
In that type of area, you're not supposed to have the element of selling produce.
Raw meat, things of that nature, letting it out and dry.
And then pigeons, they had pigeon coops up on top.
These are things I found out when I went door to door with the petition.
So what I was trying to do was create an air of someone being concerned so we could prevent another incident that they had before in 78.
1978 shoot-out
MOVE 9
But obviously that didn't work.
1978, Powleton Village of West Philadelphia.
Mayor Rizzo orders a blockade of the move house.
During the 50-day siege, neighbors and supporters take food and supplies to the barricaded.
Here we see combat footage from the siege. At times father gun fire sounds convincing. Towards the end the sound of gunfire from a previous flip continues during the scene ambulance rescue of an injured law enforcement officer. What is striking between this sequence and the shooting sequence in "Let The Fire Burn" is:
1. how different the sound of the gun fire sounds, there are no high-pitched bullets whizzing by.
2. the shooting is less erratic.
3. the shooting is overall louder in the mix rather than being lower in volume.
This produces a different affective response and authoritative response in the diegesis of the film.
August 8th, 1978, the assault.
An officer is killed.
The building is bulldozed, massive arrests, nine members draw 30 to 100 year sentences.
Frankie James returns to his home on Osage Avenue as Frank Africa.
Frank Africa
Frankie James
Well, we tried to talk to him, but it was very hard to talk to him.
They were on a true mission.
And in a way, I had to respect them that because they never veered from that mission.
They had their mandates.
They knew what they wanted, and they kept going.
And they even admitted they would use us as pawns to bring about what they wanted.
When we went to the war leader, it was more bewilderment on my part when I left.
civic
Describes how the Ward leader did not want to act on MOVE to prevent another incident like 1978 because Major Goode was up for election as the first Black Major
elections
mayor Good
racial politics
They didn't really want us to cause any problem because the election of Mayor Good when he was first running in 83.
The election in 1983 of Wilson Good, the first black mayor, was viewed as a victory of the voter registration drives.
While Good was city managing director under Mayor Green, Move had visited his office to protest the treatment of their members in Holmesburg prison, at the state prisons at Graterford and Dallas, and at Muncie, the women's prison.
1978 shoot-out
Holmesburg prison
MOVE 9
MOVE protesting Good during his time as managing director to protest mistreatment of MOVE members arrested in 1978
UPenn Dermatologist Albert Kligman conducted unethical experiments in inmates at Homesburg prison from 1954 - 1972
When Good took office in January 84, he adopted a hands-off policy toward Move.
A year later, the police department would be discussing explosives.
Earl Watkins
If the city had did their job in the beginning, it never would have happened.
City did not handle MOVE early enough, unresponsive to the community
neglect
nuisance
For instance, all this started under the administration of Bill Green.
He would have nothing to do with it.
He just washed it under the rug and passed it on to Mr. Good.
Even when Mr. Good became mayor, he had chances to like violations that were made.
They weren't paying electric, they weren't paying gas, you see.
neglect
nuisance
They were building and they didn't take care of their property.
Had all this came under the L&I inspection, they would have never had a chance for this confrontation to happen.
But they've just passed it up.
Everybody thought it would go away.
It was early Christmas morning.
cursing
loudspeaker
MOVE commission
nuisance
This might be the longest single cut in the film from the MOVE commission hearing
We were in, making Santa Claus with the kids.
We heard this loud noise.
At first, I thought it was like someone playing Christmas carols.
So we went to the door.
1978 shoot-out
prison
It was this loud speaker, this cousin from the Move House, saying about they wanted their 13 sisters and brothers out of jail.
Move Comission
First you heard, one, one, one.
Then you heard, long live John Africa.
Then you knew that it was time for you to close your doors, turn your televisions up, or just do whatever you could to try to live with the next six or eight hours.
Normally, when you talk to them, you hear, John Africa teaches us this or that.
And they normally, it's about every other sentence is that.
They talked about me so intense.
For those, that first day especially, they forgot to mention John Africa.
And it was the filth.
This clip of Carrie Foskey speaking at the hearing is also featured prominently in "Let the Fire Burn," Jason Osder's 2013 documentary about the MOVE bombing at 33:04-33:14
It was, it was unbelievable.
Something like this could be in someone's mind.
At first, the things I complained about, which I complained directly to them, was like trash and garbage and, you know, things that were laid on our property that I felt, you know, they couldn't do that.
You can do whatever you want to do, but you have to do it within your limits, just like we do.
And I complained directly to them.
And at first they were cooperative.
They would say, okay, and they would move things.
Time went on and conditions were continually worse.
You know, then we had to contend with things inside our house.
To cook dinner, which I was just determined I was going to do because that was my way of life.
I had to, before I could cook on it, I had to turn the stove on and let the bugs evacuated.
This was daily before I could use the stove.
And then even then, sometimes there was bugs in my food after it was cooked and I would have to throw it out.
I think there was one thing to move people with.
I said over and over again, over the mic was the streets were run with blood.
You know, the streets will be filled with blood.
They come here to get us.
We're going to, the streets will be filled with blood.
That was said over there loudspeaker.
Yes.
Well, I met with the mayor.
I think it was either Thursday or Friday.
I'm not sure that day before the weekend.
And he had in a short inference said that we wouldn't have to go through another summer like we did before.
And that was it.
That was the extent of it.
And that he would be over here Saturday at St. Carthage to explain his situation to the community.
As I left, I started thinking, and I figured something was happening, but I didn't know exactly what was happening.
I never dreamt in all my wild imagination that it would end up the way it did.
neglect
We did not ask for this
Prelude to confrontation
Children
Police
Ironic thing to me was that Sunday, during all this time when the police were setting up the perimeters and whatnot, I would look out the back door and the little children, they were playing in their yard and they were up at the fences.
And it struck me that they were almost like lookouts.
There was barricades at this time all over the place.
They had barricaded the entire area.
I could not get to 62nd and Osage.
I had to go around Hazel Avenue and come up Cobbs Creek and insist that I be allowed to go to 6221 so that maybe I could do something that would bring about a peaceful solution.
... but two years after the tragedy a fire insurance ad in the city subways showed a picture of Earl and Pearl Watkins of Osage Avenue.
The copy read:
“Thank God we had Hanover Mutual Fire Insurance!” Do you?
By 10:30 on the night of the MOVE catastrophe, the roof of Earl and Pearl Watkins’ home was in the basement. Like all victims of the MOVE disaster, they had lost everything. Unlike many of the others, the Watkinses received a check from Hanover Mutual Fire Insurance two days later.
Earl Watkins
Earl Watkins recounts the sunday morning scene of 500 policemen on the block,; greeting some of them and wishing them well, and the church service he attends before being asked to evacuate. In the morning scene from "Let the fire burn", he's seen speaking to camera, as he's leaving.
https://pad.ma/QMQ/editor/DPV It's an alarming statement. A lot has been said about Jason Osder's editing choices, and working with "third-party footage", but Earl's statements across both films underscore the complexity of the neighbourhood's relationship to the MOVE house.
Bombing of Osage was filmed a few months after the MOVE Bombing.
On a recurring basis, the film utilizes clips of Black people speaking about MOVE’s social undesirability to seemingly validate the attack that was brought against them. While I do not doubt that this is an attempt at complexity, it serves to further underwrite the always already sub-human status to which people-made-Black by the state—and MOVE members, in this case—have been relegated and effectively fashions these Black people, via their interviews and social respectability, into weapons against MOVE. For example, city councilman Lucien Blackwell—who is Black—testifies to his surprise in learning that it was “ordinary Black people” complaining about MOVE, a point at which he decided that this was not, in fact, a racial issue.20 Or when, during the initial evacuation of Osage Avenue, we are presented with a clip of a news anchor asking an older Black man, identified as Earl Watkins, what he thinks the extent of MOVE’s eviction will entail, to which he responds “I think, believe it or not, I think you’ll have to kill all of them.”
Each of the archives from which these clips are drawn are dictated by the confines of whiteness—presenting a narrative amenable to the state’s justification for the force that was used. And each selected clip positions viewers as all-seeing distant humanitarian spectators to an otherworldly unfolding event. What, in this particular instance, are the conditions—if any—that permit smoke’s visibility?
https://pad.ma/documents/CBZ/5from; NATALEAH HUNTER-YOUNG
SMOKE SCREENS
AND CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MOVE BOMBING
The critique is of Osder's film Let the Fire Burn.
Well, we actually knew it was going to be a confrontation on the 12th because when I got up, it was about 500 police on the scene.
So I talked to them and wished them good health, you know, and they appreciated it because we were going to church.
So when we went to church, we asked our minister to pray for the neighbors, to pray for MOVE, to pray for the police and the firemen, which he did.
The whole church prayed for him.
When we came home, they told us we had to be out about 10 o'clock.
displacement
evacuation
I went to the house, rang a bell, and Teresa Brooks Africa came to the door.
loudspeaker
MOVE 9
Novella Williams
One of the most important scenes of Novella Williams describing an encounter with Theresa Brooks Africa, one of the MOVE children. Theresa said that they were brought to this situation because their family was in jail and no one would listen. People only listened if they cursed on the loudspeaker.
Theresa Brooks Africa
I'll never forget her face.
And she began to talk about what brought them to the point where they were at that time.
And that was that their brothers and sisters were in jail and no one would listen to them.
cursing
And the only way that they felt they could get an audience or get anyone to listen after exhausting all other measures through the legal means was to get on the loud speaker and talk.
And she told me that if they cursed, they knew they would bring attention because people would stop and listen.
So I asked her then, what could I do?
Could I help her?
She said, go out as we get the press, get the black press.
They said, Mrs. Lane, everyone has vacated on the street for you.
displacement
evacuation
Police
While the interview unfolds in the background we can hear audio from presumably the MOVE loudspeaker and outdoor audio related to the activity outside of the MOVE hq. These sounds accompany the sequence over many cuts.
They only wanted this side to vacate.
And, you know, it's quarter after 11.
And of course, I still went through it.
I don't care what I told you, I'm not leaving my house.
evacuation
Police
That's when those two detectives told me, well, then, Mrs. Lane, Mayor Goode proclaimed today that anyone who does not follow his orders and vacate their premises by 10 o'clock will be under arrest.
Now, that was a different ballgame.
Now, I wasn't going to jail for the move.
I assure you, Mrs. Lane, you're going to be back.
Don't you worry.
It's only going to be a few hours.
Then I began to notice this top brass, I guess, coming in, trucks coming in, bringing weapons.
displacement
Police
weapons
And the guys with the, I guess, stakeout officers, they had on uniforms, coverall uniforms, began to come in.
And each one of them had a weapon.
Then they brought in this heavy artillery, something that looked like a cannon, and brought in the M60s.
It was halfway nighttime.
Birdie Africa
Children
loudspeaker
Michael Ward
tear gas
bomb
It was halfway nighttime?
Did someone wake you up?
We heard him on the microphone, and then we got up.
And then they started, they told us to go in, they started telling us to go in the cellar.
And then, then we was in the cellar for a while.
And we heard him on the microphone, and then tear gas started coming in.
We grabbed the blankets, and they was wet, and we had them in the bucket, and they was wet.
And then we put them over our heads and started laying down.
Now, the first thing you said was you heard someone on a bullhorn?
Do you know who that was on the bullhorn?
It was Mona, and Commissioner Sambor was on it too.
Mona and Commissioner Sambor?
What did Commissioner Sambor say, do you know?
He was telling him to come out.
Could you hear him saying that?
What did Mona say?
That she was just aroused.
We did not know at that time that the plan was to carry out the activities at five o'clock or six o'clock in the morning.
attack
Police
weapons
But at 559, the hoses were turned on.
Then we heard this peck, peck, peck, peck.
And all of the smoke and this terrible odor in the air.
And I assumed that it was tear gas.
In fact, I knew it was tear gas because I couldn't see.
Then the firing started, and you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever heard such firing.
Did you hear any explosions during that day?
Birdie Africa
bomb
Michael Ward
weapons
What did they sound like?
Bombs.
Sounded like bombs?
How many did you hear?
A lot of them.
The day of the confrontation, we had formed a committee, which was called, right there on the scene, which was called the Committee for Humanity and Dignity.
autonomy
Resistance
And the committee consisted of clergy and some community persons and a couple leaders in the area.
And we got together and we were completely opposed to what was going on.
Police
And, you know, the hoses and all the police around the house, so forth.
So we went to the mayor.
Children
Louise James
mayor goode
I ran down the street and I was yelling that my son was in that house.
environmental audio from the clips that precede and following this sequence is allowed to fade in and out of the clip with Louis James giving testimony on the street. By fading in and out it creates a narrowing of the sonic field towards the rupture of emotions given by Louis James as she mourns her son who was inside the MOVE HQ.
I was yelling that my son was in that house.
My brother was in the house.
The children were in the house.
And I was one of two of them because I heard the shooting.
And I told you I was competent and sensitive.
They never even heard me say there was my son in the house.
The cops simply grabbed me by both arms and dropped me down the street and threw me behind a barricade.
I want to know where Wilson Goode is, that he could allow something like this to happen.
Where is the mayor?
I want to talk to him.
loudspeaker
negotiation
The mayor had allowed us to go and negotiate.
We were given bullhorns.
And in a situation like that, everybody using a bullhorn sounds like a police, especially when you're in a situation like the MOVE people were.
bombing
They told me to go to the kitchen because it was going to be an explosion.
Children
Birdie Africa
Children
Michael Ward
That's when the big bomb went off.
Did you hear the big bomb?
It shook the whole house up.
And it knocked my oldest boy out of the kitchen chair, onto the floor, into the dishwasher.
Children
And the whole building was on fire, the MOVE house.
displacement
Fire
race violence
And it burned.
Let me tell you, it burned.
It burned.
Nobody did anything.
Birdie Africa
Children
Michael Ward
And they told us to go out.
And we just said, we said, we don't want to go out.
We wanted to be with them.
And then they said, we did.
We'll see them.
And then we was going out.
And right when we was taking Tommaso out, then the cops started shooting again.
Then they locked the thing up and waited for a while.
And then the fire got, all that smoke started coming in.
And you could hear the stuff dropping upstairs.
And then that's when they started hollering.
They were saying, the kid's coming out.
It was tough.
They started putting a little water on it, maybe an hour later.
Fire
But then the police came and told us to run for our lives again, take cover, because they were going.
Fire
Police
race violence
There was three people in the neighborhood with, they were MOVE people, and they were firing at the police.
And we might get hurt.
I told the people, don't you dare move, because there's no way that anyone could get out of that burning inferno and be out here shooting at us.
Don't move.
Birdie Africa
Children
Michael Ward
Where did Mona go?
She was putting, filling tree up in the alley.
She picked, she was putting, filling tree in the alley?
Yeah, and then she told them to keep running.
Then she tried to get me, and I didn't make it.
Then I fell, and then I kept running again.
And I tried to climb up the wall part, and that's when I fell, and then I fell.
Birdie Africa
Children
Michael Ward
Police
Birdie Africa
Michael Ward
Ramona Africa
Ramona Afrika and Birdie Afrika were the only survivors of the bombed building on Osage Avenue.
displacement
Fire
Home
displacement
Fire
Home
Music: Joe Zawinul, The Great Empire.
Children
displacement
Fire
Home
The day after the fire, and it was time, we were going to school, he wouldn't, he didn't want to go.
And I said, well, why don't you want to go?
He says, I'm ashamed.
I said, ashamed of what?
He said, I'm ashamed that my house burned down.
I said, but it's not your fault.
And so we went to, I called the school and told them what was happening and that we would be late.
And when he came into school, his classmates stood up and clapped for him, and that made him feel better.
Being out here these 12 months, it has made our outlook on life wider, because we can sit down and understand one another, because they can see the pain in us, and we can see the pain in them.
Children
Community
displacement
So I think by us working with one another hand in hand, even down to Amir, I think it has made us strong.
Still, it hurts.
We see the hurt in our children's eyes, but they still keep going.
I was agonizing because that's not what I asked for.
displacement
I did not ask for this
Locates the problem at the city not acting early enough.
neglect
That's not what I expected.
I expected for them to move early, when people are breaking the law.
If I break the law, they move on me early.
They don't wait.
I think it was a political football no one wanted to handle until it got to a point where you had 11 people dead and 61 homes destroyed and 250 people displaced.
Irrational guilt, the therapists say, for it wasn't the residents who requisitioned the powerful military explosive from the FBI.
I did not ask for this
Irrational guilt
Voice over
No resident transported the plastique to Osage in a bomb squad vehicle.
No resident picked up a Thompson automatic or an Uzi machine gun on loan from the federal bureau or ordered up that helicopter borrowed from the state patrol.
Losing our homes, May the 13th, 1985, was one of the greatest losses anyone could sustain.
displacement
This part of the story feels lost in my exposure to the discussion around the remains of the Delisha Africa and Katricia Dotson
It was all uncalled for, as you know, but since it happened, we must live with it.
And with your prayers and help, we shall win.
I thank you.
The kind of response that they asked for was simply for relief from a stressful condition that existed in their neighborhood, and they felt they had a right to be able to live in peace in their own community.
Irrational guilt
neglect
They did not ask for that form of relief to take the impact of having bombed a community and burned 61 homes out, and therefore it was very important for us to help them put some distance between their behest to the city and the actual results of that behest.
When you look at the situation and the problems that had been created, you then look at the burned out victims and the perimeter residents, and you often, you have to wonder what has happened between these people.
The fact that they have new homes and are going to be moving in, we don't want that to affect those who are still here and still haven't had their homes completely repaired.
displacement
Home
My whole front was like burnt.
I had the asphalt side, and it burnt and melted down.
The door would melt water.
Everything in there was black.
You know, on this porch here, that was all messed up from water damage.
TV stuff, rugs all messed up, water, pretty well messed up.
A lot of damage.
It has been very devastating to watch a disaster of this type, and now we're trying to make the community whole.
Here we hear a potential use of foley audio into the scene. Where room tone and footsteps are added to the film, yet we only hear two foot steps. While many more, with hard soled shoes, are present in the room. What is the purpose of this? Is it to create a sense of calm before the next scene of vocal protest?
loudspeaker
Memorial
protest
We will proceed to Cobbs Creek Parkway.
We will walk down to Osage Avenue.
We will then stand in silence.
We're asking everybody to bring one candle.
Now, at 527, which is the time the bomb was dropped, everyone will be asked to light that candle.
The loss of privacy, of confidence, the loss of lives, caught between the hunger for the rhythms and rituals of normalcy and the obligation to struggle against forgetfulness.
Community
displacement
Home
A community of people should never, ever relinquish the power that they have in their community.
Music: Marvin Gaye, Right On.
Pad.ma requires JavaScript.
