1985 MOVE bombing

MOVE, which Philadelphia mayor Wilson Goode and police commissioner Gregore J. Sambor classified as a terrorist organization, relocated in 1981 to a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia. For years afterward, neighbors complained to the city about trash around the property, confrontations with MOVE members, and bullhorn announcements of political messages, though the bullhorn had been broken and unused for the three weeks beforehand. In 1985, police obtained arrest warrants charging four MOVE occupants with parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terroristic threats. Police evacuated neighborhood residents beforehand, telling them they could return after 24 hours.

On May 13, 1985, nearly 500 police officers arrived to execute the warrants and clear the house, which held seven adults and six children. Officers cut off water and electricity to the building, and Sambor gave MOVE members 15 minutes to surrender. When they did not comply, police threw tear gas and a 90-minute gunfight followed in which police fired more than 10,000 rounds. At 2 p.m., Sambor ordered the house bombed. Philadelphia police lieutenant Frank Powell, flying in a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, dropped two explosive devices made of Tovex and FBI-supplied C-4 onto a fortified bunker on the roof, igniting the fuel of a gasoline-powered generator and setting the house on fire. Officials said this was meant to destroy the roof bunker so tear gas could flush out the occupants; firefighters who moved in thirty minutes later were ordered back amid gunfire as the fire spread to neighboring houses. The fire killed eleven people in the house, six adults and five children: John Africa, Rhonda Africa, Theresa Africa, Frank Africa, Conrad Africa, Tree Africa, Delisha Africa, Netta Africa, Little Phil Africa, Tomaso Africa, and Raymond Africa. Two occupants survived: Ramona Africa, the only surviving adult, and Birdie Africa, then 13 years old. The fire went on to destroy 61 neighboring houses, leaving 250 people homeless.

Goode appointed the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission, which found in its March 1986 report that dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable; Goode then issued a formal public apology, and Sambor had already resigned that November. No one in city government was criminally charged over the deaths, though Ramona Africa was charged and convicted of riot and conspiracy and served seven years in prison. In 1995, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that the bombing was not a Fourth Amendment seizure, that officials had qualified immunity as individuals, but that the city itself was not immune from liability. A federal jury awarded $1.5 million in 1996 to Ramona Africa and relatives of two people killed in the bombing after finding the city had used excessive force, and a separate federal jury awarded displaced residents $12.83 million in 2005. The Philadelphia City Council formally apologized for the bombing in a 2020 resolution and, in 2025, designated May 13 an annual day of reflection and remembrance.

The rebuilt block was later found defective; by 2005 the city was paying homeowners to leave rather than fix it, and in 2023 a member of the Africa family bought back 6221 Osage Avenue to create a memorial. Separately, the remains of two of the children killed, Tree Africa and Delisha Africa, were kept for decades by a University of Pennsylvania museum and used in an online forensics course; the disclosure caused public outcry, and in 2021 the city's health commissioner resigned after ordering other victims' remains cremated in 2017 without notifying their families.