TIL About the 1985 MOVE bombing, where the Philadelphia Police Department bombed and burned 61 houses, murdering 11 and leaving 250 homeless

“500 cops can’t arrest 4 people with warrants without resorting to firebombing 😭” - The Philly PD

And still cops wonder why so much of this country doesn’t trust police departments.

What. The. ACTUAL. 🤬‼️

They stole the bones of two of the children?!

::: spoiler Use of human remains from the bombings

Since the bombing, the bones of two children, 14-year-old Tree (Katricia Dotson) and 12-year-old Delisha Orr Africa, were kept at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2021, Billy Penn revealed that according to the museum, the remains had been transferred to researchers at Princeton University, though the university was unaware of their exact whereabouts. The remains had been used by Janet Monge, an adjunct professor in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor in the same subject at Princeton University, in videos for an online forensics course named “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology,” as case studies. Present-day MOVE members were shocked to learn this, with Mike Africa Jr. stating, “They were bombed, and burned alive … and now you wanna keep their bones.”

The city stated the remains had gone unclaimed by the families after the bombing, but in May 2021, the city of Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner, Thomas Farley, resigned under pressure after it was revealed that, in 2017, he ordered the cremation and disposal of victims’ remains without either identifying them or contacting members of the family. A day after Farley’s resignation, staff at the Medical Examiner’s Office found the box labeled “MOVE” in a refrigerated area of their office containing the un-cremated remains. As of 2021, Mike Africa Jr. stated that the Africa family have not yet decided what to do with the remains. The sisters’ remains from the Medical Examiner’s Office were released to their surviving brother in August 2022.

Although the bones used by Monge in the “Real Bones” course were given to the Africa family in 2021, accounts differ regarding how many remains were at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and whether all bones from MOVE bombing victims at the museum were returned in 2021. A legal team hired by the University of Pennsylvania stated that the bones of Delisha Orr were never at the Penn Museum. However, an investigation by the City of Philadelphia disagreed, and stated that there was evidence that remains of Delisha Orr were at the Penn Museum. Nine forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology disagreed with the claims published by Penn’s legal team and agreed with those of the City of Philadelphia. The City of Philadelphia also questioned whether all the remains of Katricia Dotson which were at the Penn Museum were given to MOVE in 2021.

In November 2024, further remains were found at the University of Pennsylvania. They were thought to belong to Delisha Africa.
:::

1985?! I was alive when that happened. I always thought it happened during the 60s.

As a Philly area resident, it always cracks me up when people learn about this. Yup, it’s the only time the US firebombed itself. It’s still a tough topic today, since not all the bodies have been returned.

https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-move-or-when-the-philly-police-dropped-a-b

If you have the stomach for it, the 2013 documentary Let the Fire Burn is worth your time. JustWatch says it’s streaming on AppleTV, Ovid and Kanopy.

I bet the cops beat the remaining 250.

No one from the city government was criminally charged in the attack.