Claymont, Del. — Claymont bookstore MeJah Books hosted Philadelphia-area organizer, activist, and author Mike Africa Jr. on August 29. He discussed his 2024 memoir, On a MOVE: Philadelphia’s Notorious Bombing and a Native Son’s Lifelong Battle for Justice. The book talk and signing was held as part of Delaware organizations’ annual observances of Black August, which event moderator and community organizer Ky described as a month-long “rededication” that “honors and commemorates” Black resistance and freedom fighters worldwide.
Africa Jr. was born into the 1972 Philadelphia-headquartered radical black and environmental liberation group MOVE. As the group’s “legacy historian,” he attempts to “honestly” capture, contextualize, and share MOVE’s lessons on topics such as revolutionary ideology, systemic oppression, and police violence from both external and internal sources. He acknowledged how the peaceful group stood out as “different and strange” at the time for their practices, such as wearing dreadlocks and eating raw food. Yet, as he pointed out to the room full of curious attendees, “they started out following all the laws.”
MOVE’s forthright and unpleasant animal rights protests made them increasingly unpopular with Philadelphia government officials, and police “torture” started as a result, according to the author. When MOVE organizers publicly vowed to proportionally defend themselves against the aggression in 1977, then-Mayor Rizzo, who was “known for his racism and brutality,” the author said, “wanted them out.”
The MOVE organizer spoke of his personal experience with grief following the 1985 Osage Avenue bombing, in which the Philadelphia Police Department destroyed over 60 homes and killed 11 members of the organization, including 5 children. “It doesn’t feel like a memory. It feels like a dream,” he told a reflective audience member.
The author also shared the story of the 2018 legal battle that freed his parents, members of the MOVE 9, from incarceration following a 1978 police-initiated gunfight. Africa Jr. recalled what it was like to watch his parents’ “bodies collide” in the moment they were reunited and to attend their subsequent wedding. He also spoke of his regret in not believing earlier that he had the power to advocate for their release. “You don’t need power, you need sense,” he recalled another member of the MOVE 9 telling him.
Africa Jr. told the audience that MOVE members understood they would likely face death for their revolutionary ideology.
“Revolution is not for the faint of heart,” he proclaimed to an inquisitive participant. Despite this, people, including those in the Claymont bookstore, widely agree that nothing the organization did warranted the level of violence the Rizzo administration unleashed on them. The moderator and the author referenced the recent killing of Kadir Skinner and the poor treatment of residents in the Christiana Park homeless encampment as modern and local parallels to widespread public outrage in the face of “wanton” systemic violence.
To conclude the event, Mike Africa Jr. invited Delawareans to participate in the next annual MOVE Day 5k. The free annual community fundraiser is scheduled for May 15, 2027 virtually worldwide or in-person in Philadelphia. Merchandise sales will be used to support efforts to build a memorial to those killed in the 1985 bombing.