For those over the age of 40, the May 13, 1985 bombing of MOVE on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia may reignite anger, assumptions, confusion, and shock over the events before and during the conflict between the Black liberation group and the Philadelphia Police Department. A reading of journalist Maida Odom’s play, MOVE Mocks Us All, will take place on Saturday, May 17 at Temple University. The performance, hosted by Klein College of Media and Communication, the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, is being presented to memorialize the events and provide a clearer image of MOVE as an organization and the culture of Philadelphia’s police force from the terms of former mayors Frank Rizzo to Wilson Goode, the city’s first Black mayor. The spoken word play is directed by Ontaria Kim Wilson.

Odom’s reading caps the six-part series, MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy, a new podcast about double standards of justice, a so-called out of control cult, police brutality, and the inequity that underlined it all,” that was launched this spring. The podcast is hosted and produced by Temple journalism professor Linn Washington Jr. who has been following MOVE throughout his 50-year career as a reporter for The Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia Tribune. Washington, who initially reported on MOVE after joining the Daily News in 1975, and Odom, former reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, were both present on the day of the bombing and reconnected years later.

The project began in 2024 as a conversation about how to approach the 40th anniversary of the bombing. Washington said that “one thing led to another” as he and Yvonne Latty, the director of the Logan Center and a professor of journalism at Temple, decided that they would do something about it. Latty, the executive producer of the podcast, drew upon her team, including graduate student Natalie Reitz who led most of the research and pulled from the findings of the MOVE Commission and material in the MOVE Collection archived in Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.

Odom is also featured in the podcast as she was stationed directly across the street from 6221 Osage Avenue shortly before the bombing. She was evacuated from her location an hour before the shootout began and a C4-laced bomb was dropped on the MOVE house by a police helicopter. Her experience later became a play written only a few years after the event as a way to process the trauma. The play was performed for limited audiences in both Philadelphia and New York before being retired.

“I remembered her play and some other things that she had collected, but had never released publicly,” Washington said. He informed Odom about the podcast, which prompted her interest in having the play being part of the series.

Latty said that the point of the project is “to sort of untangle” the complexities of the circumstances and to help people who may be unfamiliar with MOVE learn about what transpired. Another goal of the podcast is to keep the events from fading from our collective memory.

The title, MOVE: Mocks Us All, is derived from how “this small band made a mockery of our government systems as well as our collective projected humanity,” explained Odom. “It exposed every level of society. Neighbors, government, media, and individuals as antithetical for everything we profess to stand for.”

MOVE was founded by Vincent “Benny” Leaphart who later changed his name to John Africa. All members took on that surname “as a sign of unity and commitment to the teachings” of their founder, according to writer and member Mike Africa Jr. The group’s development came about during the late 1970s when the assassination of civil rights leaders was still fresh in memory. MOVE’s competitive grassroots approach to protest often involved the use of megaphones to spread its message. Taking down MOVE became a long-time project of then Mayor Frank Rizzo who confronted the organization at violent events leading up to the 1985 bombing.

In book Let It Burn by Michael and Randi Boyette, the authors describe the standoff as “a group of revolutionaries barricaded themselves in a tiny rowhouse in working class Philadelphia. Outside the house is the assembled might of a major metropolitan police force, which has literally prepared for war.” By the end of the confrontation, six adults, two teens, and three children were dead leaving only Ramona Africa as the lone survivor.

Was MOVE unjustly persecuted by a brutal police force and Mayor Goode’s administration? Or were they overly aggressive activists that were a threat to public safety and accountable for their own fate? These are questions that each listener to the podcast and attendee at the reading will be asking themselves. Yet, as we grapple with the answers, Philadelphia City Council recently announced a resolution to mark May 13 as a day of remembrance.

Although it has been over 40 years since MOVE was founded, Africa’s own words highlight what is still often overlooked. “Most people don’t know that MOVE members were animal rights activists. Most people don’t know MOVE members were environmentalists. Most people don’t know that MOVE members were prison rights advocates and civil rights activists. Most people don’t know.”

MOVE Mocks Us All: A Staged Reading will take place on Saturday, May 17, at 6 p.m. in Tomlinson Theater at Temple University. The performance is free and open to the public. Register for the event and see more details here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/move-mocks-us-all-a-staged-reading-tickets-1328575167089?aff=oddtdtcreator

Listen to the podcast, MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy, on Apple and Spotify.