I’m a few days late writing this. May 13, 2025, marked what would have been the 40th anniversary of this horrific event. But I needed time—to learn more, to sit with the weight of it, and to formulate my thoughts. Because what happened on Osage Avenue in 1985 isn’t just history, it’s a mirror.
On May 13, 1985, the United States government dropped a bomb on a Black neighborhood in West Philadelphia. Let that sink in. Not a foreign enemy, not a battlefield—but a residential block, a community. The city of Philadelphia, backed by state and federal forces, dropped an explosive device on a rowhouse occupied by members of the MOVE organization. The bomb sparked a fire that killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed 61 homes. Most of us were never taught this. It’s buried history, like Tulsa. Like Rosewood. Like so many acts of racial violence swept under the nation’s blood-soaked rug.
MOVE was not a gang. They were not a cult. They were a radical Black liberation group founded in 1972 by Vincent Leaphart, who renamed himself John Africa. MOVE members rejected mainstream society’s values, living communally, homeschooling their children, and advocating for environmentalism, anti-capitalism, and Black self-determination. They took the surname Africa in solidarity with their roots. Were they loud? Yes. Were they confrontational? At times. But what they weren’t was violent in the way the city claimed.
In 1978, during an earlier standoff at their former residence, a police officer was killed. MOVE insisted the shot came from police crossfire. Nonetheless, nine members—the MOVE 9—were convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to decades in prison. By 1985, the remaining members had relocated to 6221 Osage Avenue, a home they legally owned. Yet city officials painted them as an imminent threat, a public nuisance, and ultimately, a justification for war-like tactics.
Mayor Wilson Goode, Philadelphia’s first Black mayor, approved the operation. On that day in May, nearly 500 police officers descended on the Osage Avenue block. They fired over 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house. When MOVE didn’t surrender, a bomb—yes, a literal bomb—was dropped from a police helicopter onto the home. And then the unthinkable: the fire was allowed to burn.
Firefighters were told to stand down. The fire spread and consumed 61 homes, displacing dozens of Black families who had nothing to do with MOVE. These were working-class homeowners, many of whom had built their lives on that block. Some sued the city years later and received limited settlements, but no amount of money could restore what was lost. A neighborhood was incinerated by the very government meant to protect it.
And here’s the most damning part: no one was held accountable. Not the police commissioner. Not the mayor. Not a single officer. The MOVE members who survived were arrested. The community that was destroyed was told to rebuild. The nation, for the most part, said nothing. And the textbooks never said a word.
There was no formal eviction. No legal condemnation of the property. No felony warrants that justified military tactics. The MOVE house was bombed because it was occupied by Black people who refused to conform. Who were loud. Who were radical. Who dared to live outside the lines America draws for us.
If you think this was a one-time atrocity, think again. The difference between MOVE and the white militias that stormed the Capitol in 2021 is not just ideology—it’s skin. White domestic terrorists are often arrested alive, treated as lone wolves, given sympathy. Black radicalism? That gets bombed.
The MOVE bombing is not just a tragedy. It is a warning. It tells us how far this country will go to silence Black defiance. To erase Black autonomy. To crush Black community.
So no, this isn’t just another forgotten story. This is America.
And it is our duty to remember.
History may not always repeat, but it definitely rhymes.
#MOVE
#OsageAvenue
#BlackHistory
#NeverForget
