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Frank Rizzo: The police will be in there
to drag them out by the backs of their necks.
Reporter: There will be a confrontation this time?
-There'll be no barricade? -I don't know.
It's up to them whether-- No barricades, Mike.
They're going to be taken by force if they resist.
♪ ♪
Reporter 1: Four minutes of gunfire in West Philadelphia
early this morning, and it was over.
One Philadelphia policeman killed.
The members of the back-to-nature group MOVE
had been routed from their house.
This was the MOVE house
until a few hours ago.
-The judge said guilty. -Reporter 2: One by one,
handcuffed and heavily guarded.
"Bring your ass out here," Michael Africa shouted
at Judge Edwin Malmed.
"I find you guilty of murder in the third degree."
(voices overlapping): "Liar! Liar!" shouted Delbert Africa.
"How can you find someone guilty in this illegal court?"
Reporter 3: It was the same with all the others.
All shouting obscenities, all claiming...
emotions of the MOVE supporters were the same.
You killed my family! You killed our babies!
You railroaded our people!
Judge Edwin Malmed: They have at all times maintained
they were a family and acted together.
Therefore, I took them at their own word.
They're a family and have all acted together,
then they acted in concert.
They acted jointly, and they should all share
equally in the punishment imposed.
Reporter 4: The judge gave all nine defendants,
five men and four women,
a minimum of 30 years in prison.
Reporter 5: Prosecutors felt justice was served
with the third-degree murder conviction.
And he listened to all of the evidence,
listened to the arguments of both sides,
and showed that our system can work.
Reporter 6: But do you think that if and when the policemen leave,
and the things will return pretty much to normal,
that you could live...
-a normal life in this neighborhood? -I don't think so.
There's always gonna be a memory of what has happened.
(inaudible)
I don't think it'll ever go back to a normal situation.
Rizzo: Get that death penalty back
and put 'em in the electric chair and I'll pull the switch.
-That's when I'm sure they'll not be around. -(applause)
(car rumbling)
Interviewer: Tell me where we're going.
Oh, we're going to Graterford Prison,
SCI Graterford, they call it.
State Correctional Institution Graterford.
-I prefer to call it something else, but-- -Interviewer: What's that?
A st-- a state "incorrectional" institution!
There's no correction happening there.
Prison is supposed to, like,
uh, correct you and make you better
and make you a different person.
If it was the answer to crime,
you wouldn't have more of 'em.
Interviewer: How long you been going to prison?
I've been going to the prison for about 38 years. (laughs)
Interviewer: Why have you been going to prison for 38 years?
I'm going to prison-- been going to prison for 38 years
because I need to see my mother and father.
And they are both in prison.
So today, we're going to the prison that my father's at.
♪ ♪
The first time I went to see my dad that I remember,
I was, I guess, about 4 or 5.
And...
he's asking me do I know who he is. And I'm like, nah.
I mean, you know, I don't know who he is. No one told me
who we were going to see, so I didn't know.
So he, you know, he, he sits me down and, and he's talking to my sister.
My sister seems to know who he is, and my cousin,
who was also there, he seems to know who he is, too.
And he's asking me do I know and I say, "No."
And he says, "Well, my name is Michael."
And I said, okay, like?
I'm looking like, where, where is this going?
And he says,
"Do you know why both our names are Michael?"
And I said, "No." He said, "Because I'm your father."
And I was like, what?
Like, I got one of those? (laughs) You know.
And I hugged him, you know. And we linked, we bonded like that immediately.
I called him Dad right away. I didn't even--
No one even had to, like, coach me.
It didn't feel weird, you know, at all.
And, and, um--
And I hugged him and, and he hugged me and...
I don't know if he was crying, but I think he might've been.
You know, my dad don't really show emotions like that, you know,
but, um, that's-- that's when I remember
knowing that my dad was, you know...
and, uh, and I said to him, I said, um,
I said, "Why-why can't you come home with us?"
And he said, "I can't come home with--"
And I said, "Why not?" I said, "We walked right in the door,
"and when we leave, we're gonna walk out the door.
Why can't you just walk out when we walk out?"
And he said, he said, "I can't."
♪ ♪
That's my mama.
Well, that's a picture of my mama. (laughs)
♪
That's us at the prison. Look, that's my teeth in front of me.
When I realized that my parents were in prison,
I started looking for pictures of them together.
They got together when they were real young.
I mean, they went to prison when they were 21 and 22.
So there weren't even a lot of even pictures of them.
As an adult, I don't have any pictures of my dad
doing anything, wearing street clothes.
♪ ♪
When I learned that they were actually in prison for
the killing of a cop, I might've been
12 or 13 years old or whatever. And I asked my dad, I said,
"Is there anybody in this prison here for murder?"
He shook his head and laughed a little bit.
He said, "Yeah. They got me in here for murder."
And...
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
Interviewer: So why do you keep fighting to get them out?
Why do I keep fighting to get them out? (laugh)
I keep fighting to get them out because...
I still am connected to 'em.
I'm committed to them
the way that they were committed to me
which got the situation the way it was.
This is MOVE and this is 309 North 33rd.
MOVE is a totally revolutionary organization,
and the purpose of MOVE is to
exhibit bias activity for the purpose of revolution.
Janine Africa: Well, I didn't just join MOVE, you know.
I was raising my child.
I was on welfare and, uh,
it had to be proven to me first, and they did prove that
they knew what they was talking about,
and that they were the only people that could help me.
I was indoctrinated with a philosophy and a path
that revolution only meant picking up a gun
and going out and murdering somebody.
I never thought that revolution consisted of
revolutionizing myself
to get away from the things that caused me to wanna revolt.
Tom Kranz: They talked about living a natural lifestyle,
um, not eating processed food,
wearing simple clothing,
respecting all forms of life.
They talked about
being disciples of John Africa.
They all took John Africa's name.
Man: Where is John Africa?
That's organization business right now.
Teachings of John Africa are inherent in his disciples.
His works are shown
in the healthiness of our children,
the sturdiness of our building,
the way we live, alright?
What we're saying is that, for security reasons,
John Africa's whereabouts are organization business,
and we will keep it that way.
We're not asking people to idolize a figure,
a so-called leader as they have done in the past.
What we are asking people to do is take a serious look
at their lifestyle as John Africa has said,
see it for what it is, and do away with it.
♪ ♪
Officer Kressey, could you characterize
types of meetings or demonstrations
and what the issues that were being raised by
the MOVE organization were?
Their main thing was animal rights,
protesting that all animals should be free.
Prisoners' rights, community housing...
people incarcerated.
Was there any indication
that you were aware of that, uh, the MOVE members
were potentially violent?
Other than being vocal, no, sir.
So this one particular night,
March 28th, 1976.
Our people were coming home from jail.
We had a big yellow school bus.
I went down there to the House of Correction, picked them up.
And then when we got back,
there was a big celebration,
and not too long after that,
we was moved on by a whole bunch of cops.
Cops was swinging their nightsticks so hard
on people that they broke 'em in half.
Those sadistic, vicious,
storm trooper cops
took Janine
in their haste, and just
rushed and knocked her to the ground,
crushing her baby's skull.
The cops wasn't listening to anything that was being said.
They're just coming at us with the sticks and I say, like,
my wife, Janine Africa, was in front of me
as we came out the gate, and backing up,
trying to protect me, you know, like,
they just literally, you know, like,
sticks swinging and everything,
flung her out the way, you know,
and start coming right across her to get to me.
The baby died
with a crushed skull caused by the fall of my wife.
You could see blood running out the baby's nose.
They carry life that long, and then just like, you know, in one, you know,
one scene like that, to have life destroyed.
♪ ♪
They tried to say the baby never existed.
The baby was only one month old.
She gave birth to him at home,
so of course she did not have a birth certificate.
We actually called
-all these councilmen and people out... -Mm-hmm.
to confirm
and justify and qualify our position here.
We actually showed them the baby's body.
It was wrapped and it was dead.
Um, but they would never give the baby up to have
a autopsy.
Linn Washington Jr.: The city was in serious denial mode.
"No, we didn't do it. We didn't do..."
But, you know, those denials didn't have
too much weight because they were also
denying the gross
brutality that was going on by the police,
either being beatings or fatal shootings.
Nothing was done about it.
Nothing was ever done about
anything that happened to the MOVE organization.
This is what started everything with MOVE.
We didn't just jump out the house,
start calling cops "motherfuckers".
It is impossible to describe a maniac,
a profane, obscene, pornographic freak
without using profane words!
-Motherfuckers! -(cheering)
I mean, we do call cops "motherfuckers". Not to curse.
We don't ever call them a pig because we got respect
for the pig because the pig is life.
I believe you said there were over 100 some-odd arrests.
What was the nature of those arrests? What were they for?
There was 193. Terroristic threats, riot,
aggravated A&B, A&B,
disorderly conduct, failure to disperse.
We were given a strategy by MOVE's founder
to take a stand.
We're showing people now the importance,
the immediacy of getting rid of this system,
of confronting these judges,
of getting rid of these crooked, crooked cops,
and the whole cop system altogether.
It's dangerous to life, doesn't help life.
It destroys, cripples, retards, even kills life,
and that's what we're about now.
The story started to grow of the neighbors' complaints,
the whole bullhorn thing. I didn't quite get
why they were doing that because this didn't sound like
the group that I interviewed.
Chuckie Africa (on bullhorn): As long as this system
will impose on us,
by us being non-violent, we must fight back.
They built this fort-like
structure around their house, like a parapet.
Walls, two-by-sixes,
two-by-eights, ducked in the ground straight up and down
with a walkway on the inside.
Right in the middle of this urban neighborhood
surrounded by families and kids,
and now there's, you know, there's
timber and there's these big metal plates.
Officer Kressey: The first and second floor windows
of 309 North 33rd Street
are now boarded up.
There are no longer gonna be anymore beatings,
no more brutality,
without us defending ourselves.
If you come at us with your hands,
we'll come back at you with our hands.
Delbert Africa: If the police come in here with their hands,
we'll use our hands. If they come in here with clubs,
we'll use clubs. But if they come in here shooting
and killing our women and children and our men,
we will shoot back in defense of our lives.
♪ ♪
Man 1: You may call your next witness.
Man 2: Call, uh,
Louise James and Laverne Sims.
Mrs. James and Mrs. Sims, if you can turn around, uh...
Can you see these photographs?
Both: Yes, I can. Yeah.
These were photographs, as I understand,
that were taken on...
May 20th, 1977, in front of the Powelton Street house.
-Both: I recognize it. Yeah. -Man 2: Powelton Village. You recognize it?
-And were those members of the MOVE organization? -Both: Yes, they were.
-Were they weapons? -I don't know.
Man 2: What did the MOVE members
say on May 20th, '77?
"If you think that this white racist society
"will shoot down those white students at
"Kent State, you think they'll hesitate
"shooting down any Black, Puerto Rican,
"or Chicano brothers here in Philadelphia?
"No. How many times did you
"pick up the paper and read about another
"Puerto Rican, another Mexican, another Black man
"shot in cold blood 'cause some cop said,
'I thought I saw a piece of shiny metal.
I thought he'd shoot me.'"
Since you become mayor in 1972,
more than 150 people have been
killed by police, that more than half
of these people who were killed
were said to be unarmed at the time.
Isn't this a rather high incidence of unarmed people
-being killed by policemen in the line of their duty? -No, I--
No, I don't think so.
We have to decide who should be more aggressive,
the police or the criminal element.
I'm on the side of the police every time.
If the police department of Philadelphia was not aggressive,
I would fire the police commissioner.
More testimony today in the trial of six homicide cops
charged with beating witnesses.
Reporter 1: Warren was shot once in the head
by Officer Bow as Warren fled
from the police administration building...
Reporter 2: Three off-duty cops have shot people
who were not armed...
Reporter 3: Officer Robert Flint, now Sergeant Flint, chased Craig,
beat him with a nightstick and shot him to death.
The family was never notified
by police, hearing the news instead on the radio.
When you cannot reach out
to the officials and get justice,
when you cannot get justice
from anybody in a city,
what do you do and where do you go?
Everybody has a saturation point
that they reach sometimes
in their lives when you just can't take anymore!
♪ ♪
Carlos Africa: The May 20th, 1977, confrontation jumped off.
I had just came off
from the county prison, um...
I had did a year for a crime I didn't commit.
The MOVE organization helped get me out
through the teachings of John Africa,
and I came home.
And the MOVE members asked me
did I want to be with them
at the headquarters on Powelton Avenue,
or did I wanna do things outside the organization,
outside the headquarters.
And I said I'd rather be with them inside
of the MOVE headquarters.
Woman: And there was this business of warrants
were issued. I don't know whether it was 11 or the number--
a large number of warrants were issued for John Doe Africa,
meaning that all of the persons
on the parapet, on the platform
would be arrested if they came off.
Kitty Caparella: There's a part of me that really feels bad for them.
I know that's crazy 'cause I thought that they were really
harming the city, and yet they were...
They were kids adrift.
They were kids adrift who were in a cult and
John Africa was the cult leader.
Pam Africa: My mother actually was trying to hire
a deprogrammer for me
and all, because...
I'm beginning to look like MOVE.
I'm beginning to look like MOVE,
you know, because I'm learning something different.
I'm learning that what I thought I knew I didn't,
and the people
that, you know, I thought was about
doing the right thing and, uh, um, they wasn't.
They wasn't.
You had, um, the cops that was coming,
and there was this one highway patrolman.
He would say all kinds of things about the women and stuff,
trying to force people to come down and get into fights.
I mean, they were just...
vulgar people.
You got in front of them, they'd just curse you out.
The girls would get down and do 50 push-ups
and challenge you to do it.
Which we couldn't do.
They say, "We would kill every last one of you
"lousy no-good niggers,
"spic motherfuckers,
"white trash before we let
any of your people out." I mean, they was talking real nasty.
Bob Hurst: The kids were all naked,
and the women were...
darn near naked.
And the guys never wore shirts or anything,
and all the time
mouthing off. That's all they did, loud.
Loud, I mean, I put in a pair of...
ear things on. I mean,
you just got tired of listening to it. Just saying cr--
stuff over and over.
The radical this and that, blah, blah, blah.
And they're eating raw food.
And then the rats
and cats and dogs
and all of that sort of thing.
I mean, as soon as you got home,
you had to take a shower immediately,
even though you weren't in the compound with them.
It was just filthy, absolutely filthy.
Man: These dogs been picked up just because
they had been rejected by the society.
We found them homeless,
we found them wandering the streets, starving.
Walt Palmer: If we had not begun to start the process
of getting more people's eyes on this thing,
I truly believe they would've been killed.
They would've killed them without thought or question.
Interviewer: When you say they, who do you mean?
Police. The police, the city.
The community was getting very concerned because
the police presence started to grow quite a bit,
and the attention that was starting to get
locally and nationally.
Reporter: What about the situation here as it's been
disturbing the residents,
the eyesore,
uh, the commotion they've caused. Does that bother you?
Compared to the possibility of people getting killed,
that doesn't bother me at all.
I mean, I would hope that eventually
the community could work out these differences,
but we don't think that the police can provide a solution
because their solution is with weapons.
Now, you just said the possibility of people
-getting killed doesn't bother you. -No, the possi--
-What do you mean? -You don't believe that people will be killed over this?
I don't think that MOVE has any intention
of hurting people in the neighborhood.
I think the dispute is between MOVE and the police.
Do you see yourselves as negotiators, go-betweens?
No, not really.
MOVE does have a lawyer right now,
and I think he's playing that role.
♪ ♪
What would you like me to say?
I did give one interview to a fellow
who was doing a book on conflicts
and conflict resolution.
Interviewer: They use that book at Carnegie Mellon.
-Really? -Interviewer: Mm-hmm.
I don't agree with its philosophy.
I don't think every reso-- every problem can be solved.
I think there are some problems that are intractable.
Interviewer: Did you think the MOVE conflict was one of those?
Not when I started.
As I think I said yesterday
that the gulf between both sides is so wide,
it's very difficult for either side to trust the other.
My first involvement with them was
I was court appointed as standby counsel
to represent one of the three defendants who were
being charged with having created a riot
on the seventh floor of City Hall.
And got, kinda got to know them,
and I was very curious about
their philosophy
to be able to get society
to address what they considered
to be the main ills of society, which was technology.
They felt that man should return, basically,
to a state of nature.
In my mind, it was almost like the Lockean philosophy
of a state of nature,
and, of course, it was totally impractical.
I mean, you know, a city with millions of people,
there wouldn't be any way that the city could properly function.
To have somebody who was educated,
who should be able to think things through,
not say, "Wait a minute. This is just impractical.
I, I can't believe this."
To me was a function of they were a cult.
They were sold a bill of goods in the sense of their beliefs.
Now, that doesn't make them bad people per se.
It just means that they were basing
their behavior on things that, at base, to me,
just didn't make sense.
And the rub came because they were really committed
to those things, and they were willing to die for them.
Narrator: Debbie Africa, wearing the dungarees,
is four months pregnant, but she can still participate
in the regular activity that make up the bulk
of the MOVE members' day.
When the time comes for the baby to be born,
it will come wherever she happens to be,
without a doctor in attendance, certainly not in a hospital.
♪ ♪
Mike Africa Jr.: Once the whole thing of who is my mother,
that question came into my mind, and...
I think at that point, my grandmother
probably felt like she had to start
inserting some information.
So, you know, she started talking about it a little bit.
I was born in House of Correction
in Philadelphia on State Road.
(keys jingling)
(creaking)
So, my mother
when she was arrested on August 8th, 1978,
she was almost due to give birth to me.
And so when she did give birth to me,
it was in a prison cell.
♪ ♪
Right here.
-So this would've been her cell? -Guard: Yep.
Nothin' but time.
The first time I actually saw her was on a prison trip.
And my grandmother took me to see her.
You know, I remember thinking like,
hoping that-- (laughing)
I remember hoping that she looked
the way that I would want her to look.
When you go into the prison and you're at the prison,
you see the different people coming out of the, out of the prison
into the visiting room.
And the way it was set up was like
a set of steps that went up
like maybe six or seven steps
that they have to come down
to come into the visiting room.
And when she... (laughs) when--
before she came out of that area,
there was all these other women that came out before her, right?
Different women just coming out. Black ones, white ones,
tall ones, shorter ones. Just different people.
I remember looking at them thinking, that ain't her.
And then when she came out, I remember thinking,
"I hope that's her. I hope that's her."
♪ ♪
Rizzo: MOVE is nothing special.
They've gotten away with it because we're compassionate
and we don't wanna hurt innocent people,
particularly the children.
We'll do everything we can to
come to a peaceful ending.
But I also wanna tell you, as an old retired police chief,
that if they fire at any of our police,
that we will retaliate in kind,
and I can assure you, they're going to lose.
Craig McCoy: The city's tabloid, the "Philadelphia Daily News,"
played a role in this too because they ran
a sort of investigative story reporting
all the overtime that had been accumulated as the police
staked out the house and watched it.
The tone of the "Daily News" story was that this was a...
a mistake on the part of the Rizzo administration,
that they had not taken action.
But it had an impact, and I think
spurred the confrontation onward.
Rizzo: We're gonna put the blockade in.
We're gonna shut off all utilities.
They'll be not a fly gets through.
Reporter: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld
Philadelphia's request to blockade MOVE's headquarters.
This ends many weeks of legal maneuvering and allows the city
to starve the group out of its West Philadelphia house.
For the last six hours or so since about 6:00 this morning,
MOVE has been cut off from the rest of the city
by this not-so-familiar, but I guess it's going to be,
police barricade, A wooden barricade set up here
to make sure that no water, no food, no nothing
got through to the MOVE members.
So I guess at this point, MOVE's back-to-nature philosophy
is really being put to a test.
They're down to the bare minimum, which is survival.
Then, on the other hand, there's no telling how long
they can stay inside that headquarters.
♪ ♪
Reporter: I heard a little while ago
three people come up to the barricade,
said they lived inside.
The police said, "Where's your identification?"
They said, "We don't have any identification."
The police said, "You're not getting in."
Woman: "1984" has arrived. I now know what it's like
to be a white person in South Africa.
I am surrounded by police.
My friend, Sister Betty over here, who's a friend,
is not being allowed into the blockade.
In order to get into your home,
you had to show ID.
And on me, a lot of times, I had my ID,
I couldn't get in. My children couldn't get in.
They were saying they was putting a blockade up
to blockade MOVE in.
But it was actually to blockade the people out.
Woman: There is no way that a resolution can occur
with constant police harassment,
with 400 police in the area, with SWAT teams
sitting up with high-powered rifles, looking down on MOVE,
and with the police currently antagonizing MOVE
by throwing various kinds of objects at them.
Okay, Diane, thank you. Jack, there is the possibility...
Pam Africa: The cops would throw cherry pickers,
and throw rocks,
and what this was doing for me and a lot of people,
the belief that we had in this government,
was slowly leaving.
People wanted to come and do what they could about MOVE,
and I wound up opening my house for these meetings.
My house had white folks in it, it had Asian folks in it,
it had Black folks in it, nationalists. I mean,
it had some of everybody in there.
They were all coming together
to see what they could do to help.
We wound up having meetings at a church,
I think it's 35th and Baring or 36th and Baring.
Reporter: About 150 people called for mobilizing
against the city's blockade of the MOVE headquarters
in Powelton Village. Most of those at the church
were against the city's action.
Palmer: People were divided, pro and con.
I knew I had to use
a lot of the tactics and strategies we'd used
historically, since '50s and '60s,
to, um, to engage people.
We literally made a human chain, two-deep,
and it was, it was-- it resonated.
And it got people's attention.
I believe the mayor's trying to deny basic human rights
and constitutional rights to MOVE.
He's starving people. I don't believe that's happening
in the United States of America.
Caparella: People went nuts
because they wanted this confrontation to end.
So there was this attempt
to try to negotiate an end to it.
I mean, the city is really trying.
The mayor has bent backwards as far as making sure
a whole humanitarian approach is given.
And it basically rests with them at this time.
Carlos: The first demand was that our people
that are in state prison be released,
unconditionally,
and brought in a helicopter with Jimmy Carter.
Joel Todd: MOVE's position was we want these three released
from prison. The city's position was well, you gotta clean up
the house or you gotta leave. It's one or the other.
They kept talking past each other,
and MOVE never did anything
to clean up the house that I was aware of.
Carlos: In the first month,
our water supply did run out.
And we was telling them
that we have no more food to feed our babies.
Reporter: The food is only for the nursing mothers and the babies?
-Fred DiBona Jr.: That's right. -Reporter: Not for the adults?
-DiBona: No, sir. -Reporter: But the adults may consume it.
That's their problem. If they wanna deprive
their children of food, that's for them to decide.
♪ ♪
John Penrose: The city can't do nothing
in the face of some of the things
that were going on in that house.
There were public health issues.
There was a lot of other sanitation stuff, uh.
You couldn't do nothing, but you don't do what
the Philadelphia PD did.
That was crazy.
We had these things. When I was a kid,
me and my dad, every so often,
these ideas that we had about what was gonna happen when
they came home would change, right? So, when I was like...
10 years old, it was always this thing of
he's gonna teach me how to play basketball.
He's gonna teach me how to play football.
He's gonna teach me these, you know, these things that
10-year-olds do, right? From like when I was a teenager,
mid teenager to-- he's gonna teach me how to talk to girls,
he's gonna teach me how to, like, do business and build-- and help
the organization in that way. And as time went on,
now it was, okay, you got kids. You're 20-something.
Right. You're having kids, I'm gonna help you raise your kids,
and when we get home, we'll help you do this
and we'll do this together.
Into the 30s, it was, we'll build a business together.
And these things would change every decade,
you'd get these other stories
that these are the plans that you have
when this day comes.
And, um, now, we're into the...
you know, um, I'll take care--
I will take care of my father.
I will make sure that he has
the things that he needs to live out his life
happy and stress-free,
and, you know, this is where that's going.
Within the next 10 years, it'll probably be something like
I'll make sure he has a good burial plot.
I'll make sure he has a good, um,
a good memorial service.
I'll make sure that all the people that he loved
and that loved him is at his memorial,
and the people who, who, who didn't
will not get an invitation 'cause I'll tell you one thing
about my father. If I know anything about him,
I know he do not mess with people
who talk a bunch of shit and do nothing.
But that's where we're going.
I mean, what can I say about, what can I do about that?
Except just keep on pushing.
(static)
(indistinct chatter)
♪ ♪
(inaudible)
Palmer: We got people who were strong,
not just local grassroots everyday people,
but we built an army
of people in every level.
I mean, the most powerful people in business.
The most powerful people in the pulpit,
in education and law.
I pulled in Oscar Gaskins, who I law clerked for.
People who might not have an interest in MOVE,
but might have an interest in
the constitutional questions, right?
And all of this really allowed us to give us leverage.
The mayor couldn't go against the forces of, like,
you know, the, the, the large business interests
that were here in the city of Philadelphia,
and the large legal institutions, etc.
Carlos Africa: Every week,
the support from the people outside,
all over the world,
and in Philadelphia intensified and got so, so big
that, eventually,
the city officials came to us and asked us
what do we want
to end this confrontation.
And we told them. We said, "Y'all have our demands.
That our people be released unconditionally."
All this time, Rizzo had been saying
that MOVE had underground tunnels.
They had bombs.
They had all this high-powered weaponry.
That is what's happening, and it's happening right now.
Police are inside MOVE headquarters
in West Philadelphia conducting an intensive search for weapons.
Don Fair and the Live Instant Eye are standing by at the scene
and Don, how is that search going?
The Philadelphia Police Department
are going inch by inch through the MOVE compound
with metal detectors and with other devices
trying to find any weapons that might still be inside.
Reporter: What does the mood seem to be
down there at MOVE headquarters right now?
Don Fair: The MOVE members who are on the porch seemed to be a little testy,
seemed to be a little bit upset.
They seemed to be apprehensive that maybe the police will find
some more weapons. That's the mood down there, and right now,
we're just waiting to see what they come up with.
Well, the search wound up showing
that there was no real illegal weapons.
And what they found in there were weapons
that, for the most part, were damaged,
firing pins not-- So, it was...
It really was a ruse in many ways, right?
And a clever one.
There was no tunnels. There was no bombs.
There was nothing but the explosive power
of John Africa that had radiated
around the world for people to see
who MOVE is and who they are.
Do you recognize these people
and the things that they're holding in their hands?
Sims: Exactly, appear to be weapons, and I don't want anyone
to think that I'm insulting their intelligence.
You know, you may say
she's got to think we're crazy. There they are standing there
with weapons, and she's saying that
they are not weapons,
and I base that on the fact that
they searched 309 and 307.
They went up and down the walls and everywhere,
from the cellar to the roof,
but what they brought out
were inoperable weapons.
Carlos Africa: They met our demands except...
that Jimmy Carter didn't come in a helicopter.
(clapping, cheering)
Palmer: We had also knocked out
an agreement that there'd be a 90-day truce.
We wanna disengage these wires and fences.
That's coming down, right?
So for 90 days, there was a quiet, right?
-Reporter: Are you glad that this process is over? -Uh...
It's not over really. I'm saying, like, um,
until the city stop harassing MOVE members,
until like, uh, they stop the continuing harassment,
then it'll never be over.
And then what happened was
City Solicitor Sheldon Albert said,
and I think this really triggered it and rekindled it,
"On the 91st day,
we intend to tear down those two buildings."
Well, when he said that, everything came apart.
The community was enjoying a solid peace.
You filed for an injunction?
Palmer: The injunction is only to make sure that house stays intact,
to prevent anybody from touching one brick.
Washington: From the starvation blockade,
there was some agreements, some of them written,
some of them allegedly understood.
So, one of them was that
MOVE would be allowed to stay in that house
until they were able to move out.
Rizzo and his crew contended that
they were supposed to be out of the house on August the 1st.
That really wasn't a clear understanding from everybody,
and that August 1st date of getting out
again led to Rizzo
to do some extralegal actions.
Sue Africa: And these restrictions were put on us by DiBona,
not by the judges that released us.
And we're saying this is another reason why
we feel certain that DiBona is trying
to instigate another confrontation.
Anything other than terms of the original agreement
will not be abided by by MOVE members.
Sue Africa: We said that we had to have time
to find homes for our animals
because we had a lot of animals, and they gave us 90 days
at first, and they...
We couldn't just leave our animals there, so we said
we want an extension. They would not give us an extension,
which is what led to them coming out.
I know good and well that Frank Rizzo,
if he didn't sign off on it, it wouldn't have happened.
So we were really negotiating with Frank Rizzo, Mayor Rizzo,
behind the scenes using these intermediaries.
My dad set tough rules,
and you played the game by his rules or you didn't play.
There was no free or open forum, you know.
No. Pop is not gonna...
Boom, you got knocked down, you know, and...
Good system.
He was easily agitated, much like Trump is.
He's easily agitated. People kinda know
how to get to him, what buttons to push, right?
So, so just escalate more and more.
-Woman: We saying we getting rid of Rizzo. -Man: That's right.
We saying we tired of that man coming
and taking his racism and spewing it on Blacks.
We saying we know that he's racist.
He knows that we're right, and we know we right.
He know it. He knows we innocent. He knows we committed.
-He wanna be racist, we got all Black members inside of here. -Man: That's right!
We don't have no whites inside of here. And we saying the door
is open 'cause we know he coming down here to kill.
If he come to our front door, we know he coming in here
with the intentions to kill 'cause we done told him
if he come inside our house, he gonna murder everybody in here.
Not like we wanna die, but rather than have a man
like Rizzo dictate our lives, make us unhealthy,
make us sick and kill any more of our babies, we'd rather be dead.
'Cause to be free is not to be so-called living on this level.
It's to be free of the oppressive power
of a maniac like Rizzo.
What they need is a good bath and some soap and water
-in their mouth, and I can tell you that... -(applause)
unequivocally, Hank,
they're going to go either easy or hard way.
That can be standing up or laying down.
Caparella: Every night on TV, Rizzo was
taunting them and they were taunting Rizzo.
The problem was...
♪ ♪
the cops had more firepower.
Official: And now this second day of August, 1978,
upon consideration of the then petition
and accompanying affidavits and upon mention
of Sheldon A. Albert, City Solicitor,
attorney for the plaintiff with petitioner,
a rule is hereby granted upon
Janet Holloway, Consuela Dotson,
Janine Africa,
-Charles Sims... -Delbert Africa: Talking about legalized murder!
-Every time you civilized maniacs murder... -Merle Austin,
-...shipped Jews in gas ovens, -Phillip Smith, Delbert Orr,
-you had legal papers! -Carlos Perez, Debbie Zelda Sims,
-In the Korean War... -Michael Davis,
Raymond Chester, Robert Moses...
Rizzo: ...at 12:01 AM, the police will be in there
to drag them out by the backs of their necks.
There will be a confrontation this time. There'll be no barricade.
I don't know. It's up to them whether-- No barricades, Mike.
They're going to be taken by force if they resist.
No question about that.
-Children or not. -(indistinct chatter)
Reporter: Do you feel that MOVE has been treated fairly in this?
Oscar Gaskins: Well, I think that they've
been treated particularly unfairly
in the sense that they are now on $50,000 bail,
and wherever they may be found in and around the city,
they're going to be arrested.
The same kind of thing that had happened to them before
when they got arrested is going to happen to them this time,
and I think that it was totally unnecessary.
Ed Rendell: The press would go out to the house
with microphones and cameras, and the MOVE members,
every other word was the F-bomb.
They were so aggressive
and so violent and so angry.
Nobody sided with them.
That's why you say...
every event takes place in the context of its time.
Had that happened today,
people would've gone wild.
There were these two forces.
There was MOVE, and there was Rizzo.
They were complete opposites,
and whatever you wrote, you were gonna get flak
from the other side.
Michael Tuck: If either side felt that
we were doing a superior job,
then in fact, we probably would not be doing a superior job.
Both sides are down on us.
-Karen Pomer: What are you trying to accomplish? -Trying to tell the truth.
Pomer: I don't think you really ever put on the media what MOVE
really stands for.
Charles Peruto Jr.: No one saw any message that MOVE was trying to convey.
This was a counter-culture
Philadelphia hadn't seen before.
It's a different time and it wasn't received well.
Especially by the Blacks.
They thought they were an embarrassment.
And many of the Blacks that I talked to
and socialized with and went to school with and worked with,
they didn't wanna have anything to do with MOVE.
So if they're not getting through to the Blacks,
imagine how they're gonna try to get through to the whites.
Forget about it.
Tuck: I don't think it's important what MOVE really stands for.
If the law says you must be out of this house,
then you must be out of this house.
Man: And if the law said you had to move?
How the hell you gonna spend your money, your lifetime
worried about owning and the court gonna get up and say, "You move"?
I'm telling you that there are eviction notices served on people every day.
If you own a home and you have broken the law--
Y'all gonna get up and put me out any kind of way you want?
If you buy a home and you have broken the law--
-They haven't broken the law. That's them people's religion. -Judge says he broke the law.
-Judge tells lies just like me or you. -Okay.
Frank Goldstein: People who became part of MOVE made certain
personal decisions. They decided to let
their hair grow into dreadlocks.
They decided to look different.
They decided to spout different philosophies.
They decided to eat different foods.
They made these decisions.
Chuckie Africa: We're sayin', we're talkin' about protecting our family.
We don't give a fuck how many guns they got, man.
We ain't concerned with no guns.
We are armed with truth.
Ain't no way in the world a gun is gonna stop truth.
Ain't no way in the world a gun is gonna stop what's right.
They can't stop life. I don't give a fuck
-how many people they kill. -Tuck: When they come in though
and they say they're going to arrest you,
they start taking you outside, what do you do in that case?
-We do what's necessary, man. -Which means what?
-The strategy of John Africa. -Which means what?
-What's right. The strategy of John Africa. -Which means what?
Okay. Do you cite the strategy of John Africa,
-or do you actually do something? -The strategy of John Africa
is the strategy that is right.
The strategy that kept every last one of us alive last year
during this whole confrontation.
- But they didn't come in to get you last year. -They did so.
What do you call a blockade? What do you call a blockade
where they cut off our food and water?
What do you call 100 cops marching down the street
to our very gate with a little truck to pull down our fence?
If that ain't coming in to get us, what do you call it?
-Do you have that around your house? -What do you think
they been doing for seven years, man? Playing chess with us, man?
-When my baby was killed, you call that not coming to get us? -(overlapping)
-Chuckie Africa: That's right. -Tuck: My question is this.
If a policeman is standing there,
-do you fight? Do you cite John Africa's strategy-- -Policeman is standing here now.
-Janine Africa: I'm saying-- -Tuck: The policeman is not trying to drag you outside.
-(people shouting) -Chuckie Africa: The policeman is here.
The policeman been here for seven motherfucking years, alright?
The policeman was here. The policeman is here
when my sister's baby was killed. The policeman was here
when we was trampled and beat in front of judges in courtrooms.
The policeman was here when we was beat in the goddamn prison, man.
The policeman was here
when four of my brothers was beat unconscious
and beat the fuck back to consciousness,
goddamn it, in that fucking prison.
The policeman is here, been here, and ain't gonna leave
unless the fucking people get the fuck rid of them.
Goldstein: I guess in a minute and a half, sometimes sound bites
are chosen or other things
are part of stories that
can help mold what someone thinks.
But they made those decisions,
and I think they were seeking
some kind of end,
or evolution, maybe is a better word,
of their way of life.
But they wanted something out of that.
And so...
I think the media was part of giving it to them.
Pomer: It's about 12:20 right now.
There's approximately 500 or 600 people
gathered around MOVE headquarters,
and it seems apparent that the police do not wanna move in
as long as the media and all these people are present.
It's most likely they'll use past tactics and come in
when there are no camera crews
and no people present
to witness what goes on.
(helicopter whirring)
(truck backing up)
Murray Dubin: The street was just jammed.
It was jammed with reporters and with neighbors,
and the beginnings of barricades,
and all sorts of police.
And we just sort of stood around.
An "Inquirer" photographer came. His name was Bill Steinmetz.
And then,
both Bill and I noticed that the police
seemed to be moving the media away,
ostensibly for their own safety.
But if I was a block to the north,
I was gonna have trouble seeing
what was going on at the MOVE house.
It's now probably 3:00 in the morning,
4:00 in the morning, and I'm not tired.
I mean, adrenaline is racing by this time,
and I decide
to start knocking on doors to see
if someone will let me in so I can look out a window.
They were students in a second floor apartment,
and they said sure.
Bill and I went into the house,
and found a window facing Pearl Street,
and sat on the floor and looked out the window.
And Bill got his camera stuff ready,
and we just waited
and waited and waited.
Palmer: I got a call from Louise Africa,
John Africa's sister, about 4:00, 5:00 in the morning, and said,
"Walt, you gotta come down here because it's crazy.
"They're bringing in what looks like tanks.
They got police everywhere, helmets, etc." And I tell her,
I said, "Louise, there's nothing else I can do. I mean, it's, it's--
"It's over. These guys have decided
"they're gonna go after each other. They're gonna, you know,
have a shootout, so all I can do is let them have their shootout."
Devita Johnson: I had got evicted.
Had to get out, so I had nowhere to really go, right?
So they were like, "Well you can come around here, Dee."
And I remember laying down, going to lay down with my kids
in one of the rooms. And, uh,
and I heard somebody say,
"They out there." I'm like, they out there? Who out there?
By the time we got down the steps,
when I got down the steps,
I looked out the house,
and it was blocked off. It was blockaded off
all the way around. You could see them all the way around.
And I was like, dag!
What do I do now? I'm thinking about me. What I do now?
Consuela Africa: There were over 600 cops,
heavily armed.
Uzis, hand grenades,
cherry bombs, bulldozers.
Everything that you can have
in wartimes, except the bomb.
Palmer: Something told me, I better get down there.
-(helicopter whirring) -It was about 6:00.
I go down, and my observation is that
they were totally surrounded.
They've let nobody in.
-Officer 1: Is that video tape? -Woman: No, no. I...
-Officer 2: You have to leave, please. -Woman: Okay, I understand.
Palmer: They did let me in only because of the past history.
Commissioner O'Neill was there, and he wants me
to use a bullhorn to tell them to come out and surrender.
I said, "You must be out of your mind. You gotta be kidding me."
(laughs) I said, I'm not asking nobody
to surrender, right?
(rumbling)
Man: The bulldozer was to clear away the fence area, is that correct?
Joseph O'Neill: That is the fence and the platform, yes, sir.
After they knocked the barrier down, we came up with the RAM.
-(rumbling) -(indistinct chatter)
And having penetrated those barriers and the windows,
what action did the plan call for and what action was taken?
Our personnel, a combination of personnel,
stakeout, and highway...
all volunteers, I might add.
Went into 307
and went through the building thoroughly,
starting top to bottom or bottom to top.
We also were able to get people into 309.
Palmer: They had surrounded them, and, um,
so then he finally called me. He said,
"Walt, go ahead in." Right? So I went in the house,
and then I started describing. I said, "MOVE,
"you guys are surrounded, okay?
"You got six policemen with sub-Thompson machine guns
standing directed at the basement." And the police say, "Walt!
Don't, don't, don't say that! Don't tell them where we are!"
I said, and you got them upstairs, right?
So, they're saying,
"They can shoot up through the floor!"
All I was doing, I wasn't trying to give them any data
except other than here's the situation that you're facing.
So, let me take the women out, right?
You guys stay, have the fight,
and let them go. "No, no!
Tell them to get the fuck out of our building! No, no!"
They had only one intention,
and that was to kill the MOVE organization.
While we were in our basement, you could hear them
drilling a hole in the wall--
in the floor, the first floor to the basement
to gain access to us.
I could hear them, while they were doing all this,
saying,
"Kill anything that moves in here. Anything."
That meant babies, women,
animals, men. Spare nothing.
O'Neill: I can recall being with Bob Hurst
alongside him, at the side window I believe it was,
and we were looking down into the place,
and noted that they had weapons in the form of rifles.
I was at the window around the front of the house...
um, with several officers,
think some highway patrol officers went into the house,
maybe about 15 or 20 of them,
and they came out pretty quick because,
uh, we heard the shots, but they were
shooting up through the floor.
Johnson: Something was shooting from upstairs
down into the basement
'cause they had a generator. You could see something
plicking off the generator like sparks.
Now we see the dogs, the dogs was over there.
And I remember me and Delbert running low,
not wanting to get hit. I'm running,
I'm running right behind Delbert.
So, we get the dogs,
but by that time, I remember
they stopped shooting.
Then when they stopped shooting,
they started hosing, putting water down.
(water spraying)
♪ ♪
(indistinct)
Hurst: And they just poured water.
It was unbelievable the way
they poured water into that home.
Thought they were gonna drown them, for God's sake.
Their smart people in the upper echelon
decided to put water in the basement
instead of tear gas because tear gas would
burn the babies' eyes.
Well, water will drown them, too.
Consuela Africa: I'm five-foot-six.
They pumped so much water into that basement
through the window and through the side, in our houses,
that I had water up to here.
I had to literally hold my son up here,
so he wouldn't drown.
Palmer: I went back one more time.
If they don't come out, if they don't wanna come out,
this is it. I'm outta here.
And Chuckie Africa and I got into a cussing match, right?
He's cursing at me, I'm cursing at him, right?
And the police are telling me, "stop! Stop!
You gonna escalate something! You're not helping!"
I'm not no professional negotiator, right?
I'm just an old former street gang guy, right?
So, when I leave out,
I'm standing looking at the house
in the middle of the street,
and I hear what sounds like a shot.
(indistinct)
(loud gunfire)
(shouting)
(gunfire)
(gunfire increases, quickens)
(rapid gunfire continues)
-(gunfire stops) -(engine rumbling)
♪ ♪
Two years ago, the women went up for parole
at the same time.
Janet and Janine were denied pretty much right after
the, um, the hearing.
And, my mom, they had taken awhile.
A month had passed, six weeks passed,
and they still hadn't come back with an answer.
The parole agent in the past
had said that she needed five votes, and she had four.
So, we were thinking like they were kinda
tug-of-warring, you know, on that fifth voter.
It was like, okay, maybe this'll happen now.
Maybe it'll happen now.
And they came back neg--
They gave her a two-year hit.
A two-year hit. So at that point,
it was like, okay. They weren't deciding
whether or not they were gonna parole her.
They were deciding how much time they were gonna give her.
♪ ♪
The parole board expects you
to answer questions a certain way.
They don't ask you, "Do you feel remorse?"
They don't say, "Do you take responsibility for your crime?"
They don't say that. They ask you questions,
and they, they get--
What they gather, what they pick up from you,
they make their decision, and that's the kind of response
they come back with.
I talked to my mom, I talked to my dad, and we're always
bouncing off each other with these different ideas,
and, you know, and so she said, "You know.
"They have classes up here for
how to re-enter into society." Right?
So she was like, "I'm gonna start taking some of them classes."
And I'm like, yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, and,
I said, "Dad, did you think about taking some of them classes?"
He said, "I took every class that they offered."
So, my mom was like
started learning the language
that they're, that they're speaking and what they're looking--
There are certain words that they look for, and like...
she wasn't-- she was never...
happy that the cop was killed.
-(siren blaring, gunfire) -(indistinct chatter)
Officer: We are under fire. Back up. Back up by the car. Back up.
(gunfire)
Hurst: I seen his face.
Chuckie Africa. He popped out,
and boom boom boom boom, went down.
When the bullets came,
I literally saw the sparks
fly past my face.
Literally saw sparks.
They had like a blanket
like over our heads
where the wood from the beams, when they were shooting the bullets,
where the splinters wouldn't like
get in our eyes or in our head or in our face.
-(gunfire) -(siren blaring)
Dubin: I was transfixed when the shots started firing.
I couldn't sort of stop looking.
And Bill Steinmetz told me to duck.
So I ducked,
but then I couldn't see.
I just hit the ground 'cause I just knew
some cowboys out here are gonna just go crazy, and they did.
The police with those six sub-Thompson machine guns
opened 'em up.
I mean, totally, and emptied them.
The commissioner said, "Stop! Stop! Stop!"
-But he couldn't stop them. -(gunfire)
♪ ♪
Hurst: They pulled me off
and they come to the tree, back to the tree,
where everybody was in a prone position.
They told me to come out. I had fired my weapon into the--
-into the basement. -Palmer: When the police stopped,
then after that, MOVE started shooting.
-The shooting started coming out of the basement. -(gunfire)
Tom Hesson: First shot I think was Bill Stewart got hit
in the back of the neck.
And he fell on top of the fire hose.
Firehose goes up in the air,
and after that, was just bedlam coming out of there.
They just, you know, cops shot. Well, I seen Jimmy Ramp
was standing behind a pole across the street,
and he kept looking out from behind the pole.
I kept hollering for him to stay back.
So I turned around again and he was going down.
I left the firemen to run across to him,
and I got halfway across Pearl Street and I got hit.
I got hit in the chest.
Bullet come through the shield and through the vest.
(gunfire)
(siren wailing)
Put smoke on Pearl Street so they couldn't see us.
They put me in a van or in the truck
I was supposed to be driving, the tank.
To get me outta here. They put Jimmy on top of me,
took us to the other end of the street,
and took us to different hospitals.
After that, you know, I don't remember anything.
-(gunfire, siren blaring) -(indistinct chatter)
♪ ♪
-(gunfire, siren continues) -(indistinct)
Man: What caused them to come out?
O'Neill: Well, we turned the water on again,
then began to pour smoke in.
I think that was the sequence.
Johnson: Once the tear gas hit,
you couldn't talk, you couldn't see,
you couldn't hear nobody,
and the only thing I remember was
I was standing near my son, one of my kids was here,
one of them was here.
They was 4 and 5,
and one was 2. Myisha was 2.
I had Isha in my arms.
I said, "Oh, fuck it. This is it."
And I started walking, and when I got by the window,
I still had Isha in my arms,
but I could see Merle. Merle was out.
If Merle out, I'm going out.
But once I got out the side of the window,
this is what they say. Where that damn picture?
When I got out the side of the window
to get Merle, this is what I was faced with.
(crowd yelling)
I started walking down Pearl Street,
but when I got to the corner of Pearl Street,
the civil disobedience-ing women were coming towards me.
They was gonna take my daughter.
They was gonna take my baby from me.
They put me in the paddy wagon.
My skin was burning, them clothes was so hot
that they was sticking to my skin, and I remember trying
to keep them off of my skin because it was burning.
Man: I assume that you're distinguishing between
the word "smoke" and the word "tear gas,"
-is that correct? -O'Neill: That's correct. I conferred with Dr. Polk
about the effect of gas on the lungs of a child
because we knew that they had
some very small children in there,
and their recommendation was
that we not use it. So we didn't use it.
Fair: They've just thrown gas,
and they're dragging MOVE members out right now.
Man: ...basement window in the front.
One of the MOVE members coming out and to prison.
Hurst: The next half hour or so like that
was a matter of getting everything out of there.
♪ ♪
(inaudible)
(muffled chatter)
Then they all started coming out,
and they were putting their children out first
so that they, of course, wouldn't be shot.
(inaudible)
Then Delbert Africa started coming out
of the Pearl Street window,
and, of course, he was helped out
by the couple of stakeout officers and, um...
Interviewer:
Well, he was. um,
he was being subdued.
Lemme just put it that way. He was...
-he was subdued. -(indistinct shouting)
Bob Steinmetz: He's hitting him, he's hitting him.
Hitting him on the head. Kicked him in the head!
(crowd shouting)
-I have no idea. I couldn't see. -Man: That's enough!
Hurst: He was being helped out by them three officers.
And then promptly went to the hospital.
But, um, should've went to the morgue.
It's one of the few things I think
I've seen as a reporter, for a long time,
that I'm never gonna forget.
It was vicious.
It was sadism. It was...
attempted murder.
Dubin: At that point,
we become aware that the police
see us in the window.
So we're a little nervous about that.
We don't want anybody shooting at us,
so we move from the window.
Bill's afraid they're gonna confiscate his film.
This is a time when they're still using film.
And he takes the film out of his camera and puts it in his boot.
♪ ♪
Hurst: So they got everybody out of there.
And then,
then they put a unit together,
and I was one of them.
Man: You mentioned that Mr. Hurst, who I believe currently
heads the Fraternal Order of the Police, played a role
-in the 1978 plan. -O'Neill: He happened to be
right at the same-- where I happened to be,
and I'm pleased that I was at the same location
-that he was. -Man: Do you recall
whether Mr. Hurst played any other role
at that time, other than observing
what was going on in the basement?
I don't really know what you're, you know,
if you could re...
Man: It is your recollection then that he was there with you for
-at least a short period of time? -O'Neill: Oh, probably a matter
of a few seconds or minutes, something like that.
Man: And that's all that you observed him do
and that was to peer into the basement.
You didn't observe him do anything else at that point?
Well, he was telling them to put their weapons down
-and things of that nature. -Man: Do you know
whether or not he recovered a weapon from inside of
the MOVE house on Powelton Avenue?
I don't recall specifically whether he did or did not
because a number of weapons were recovered
and they were handed out. In fact,
one was handed to me, and I remember that
the MOVE people trying to make a big issue
over the fact that I had a weapon
that I had handed back into them, or some such stuff as that
that the weapon was a police weapon.
♪ ♪
Hurst: When we went into the house,
and then down into the basement,
we waded through there.
The water was up to my belly button, about three feet.
And then there was sorta like
an area to the right, and to the left was storage, and we--
Excuse me, and we took some weapons
and stuff like that and ammo,
and different things like that,
and make a chain line
to go from there out to the window.
And it was put out the window like that from us.
The tear gas was down there,
and it was-- I was overcome by it,
as were several of the other officers,
and so we came out, and we went to the hospital.
I went to the Misericordia Hospital.
Interviewer:
Pardon?
The police used tear gas.
So when I was in the hospital,
I drew a plan
of everything I remembered in that basement...
and what was taken out, to the best of my ability.
Well, it was good that was done because...
Rizzo ordered the building demolished right then.
Right then.
Taken down completely with bulldozers.
And, and so there was no evidence.
And so that little sheet of paper
was the thing that was used for the trial.
Who knew?
(keys rattling, unlocks door)
Mike Africa Jr.: John Africa said, "Do what's necessary."
I got a tape of him saying that.
So I would listen to it, and just listen to it,
and then I would-- I spent a lot of time
with another supporter, and we found a lot of stuff.
Witness testimonies, police statements,
all kind of stuff.
I actually have FBI files in here
from the investigative reports they did on MOVE
from back in 1973.
And this is not even all of it. This is just some of it.
-Interviewer: -Needle in a haystack.
I'm looking for the evidence. I'm looking for the information
that would show
something about their innocence,
and it doesn't matter
if you have to read the entire
Philadelphia Sunday paper
to find that one line.
Look for the needle in the haystack. Find it.
And if you can't find it in this paper, find it in another paper.
I wound up doing that info-- that stuff
for over 25 years.
Reporter: The compound belonging to
the controversial radical group MOVE
is no more tonight. It's been torn down by city bulldozers
after a dramatic early morning shootout in West Philadelphia.
Eleven MOVE members are behind bars tonight
after the battle. One police officer is dead,
four others hospitalized, along with two firemen.
And as I perceived it while watching this drama unfold,
MOVE gave its dogs more of a chance
than it gave their own children.
But I really think something sh-- could've been worked out
a little bit better than what this is.
People getting killed, babies,
police officers.
Everybody suffering, neighborhood is tensed up.
There were some residents who felt the city acted with plenty
of restraint and blamed the whole confrontation on MOVE.
Most of those people refused to appear on camera
for fear of retaliation.
That concludes our coverage of what happened in
Powelton Village on this day, August 8th, 1978.
It was a day on which a policeman was killed, a house was torn down,
and a whole movement exploded.
For Bill Baldini, I'm Michael Tuck. Good night.
♪ ♪
Pomer: I remember a few days ago,
I think you were trying to save-- get a court order to save the house.
Palmer: Yeah, what we did, Oscar Gaskins' office filed
an injunction enjoining the city from tearing
the property down.
And as you can see here, the city is now in the process
of tearing the property down.
Question we've gotta ask is why.
You know, why is that house being torn down
and why is there such a great effort put to it?
Tonight, we have a complete special report
on the battle at MOVE, the wild shootout
that took a policeman's life.
The Instant Eye was there through the terror-filled fight,
and we've got reaction from all sides.
All the while, they play on the news media that the people
in Powelton Village agree
with what was going down. That was a lie.
They'll go down and get three white people off the corner
from Baring Street
and say we don't like MOVE.
Why ain't they ask the Black people?
Rizzo: The press has to
take part of the responsibility
for their irresponsible acts.
They believe what you read,
what you write, and what you say,
and it's got to stop.
And one day, and I hope it's in my career,
that you're going to have to be held responsible
and accountable for what you do.
One reporter claims to have looked up and seen the muzzle
of a weapon sticking out the window.
Walt Hunter from WCAU, by the way,
swears that a shot was fired going in this direction.
Reporter 1: For Helen Ramp and her 14-year-old son, James Junior,
the terror and violence at MOVE headquarters came
crashing down this morning at Presbyterian Medical Center.
Inside, they were told James Ramp, husband, father,
and Philadelphia police sharpshooter,
had been shot to death in the crossfire at
the West Philadelphia compound.
Ramp, 52, was shot in the chest
and died soon after being admitted.
Shortly after the shooting ended,
there was a near violent confrontation
between police and an angry crowd that gathered.
-Nobody was hurt. -Reporter 2: To prevent the spread of trouble,
police sealed off one corner of the intersection
where the rock throwing occurred.
We talked with one young man, a teenager,
who accused the police of beating him.
And, as you remember, I asked him,
"Now, what do you mean when you say beating?"
And he indicated that the police pushed and shoved him
and hit him with a knife stick-- a nightstick.
What people don't understand, I think, Vince,
is that in a situation like that,
police just don't have time to ask twice.
So perhaps if there was some direct involvement
by high city officials,
-we could cool out any possible problem-- -Yeah. Communication is needed
because when we talked with them and also with the policeman,
we did learn that rumors were flying.
Reporter: Commissioner, what's the situation in Powelton now?
Police are in control in Powelton at the present time,
and if there are any additional confrontations,
I can assure you that the police will take care of them.
We will not brook any nonsense.
Anybody that takes his own out in Powelton or anywhere else
in this city
is going to be crushed.
Pomer: They all charged, chased everybody
all, all over the place with their clubs.
Bunch of people ran into their own houses and were followed.
I was upstairs sleeping, then I heard all this noise on the steps.
Then the cop was swinging the nightstick
and hit me in my eye and my head.
-Reporter: Where were you at that time? -On top of the steps.
Reporter: You were on top of the steps. The cop came into the house
-to do this? -Woman 1: Yeah! They came into the house!
And here comes all these people and all these cops.
They're chasing them again with the nightsticks, hitting them all
on the shoulders and stuff. There's about three up there already hurt.
Woman 2: These people want these white racist pigs to go home,
back to their own northeast families where they belong at.
Go up there and beat heads
and trample on people's children with their horses.
They don't want this shit down here. We tired.
-(crowd yelling) -No-good shit-eating vermin, motherfucker!
Kill me, you son of a bitch!
No-good white motherfucking beasts!
Reporter 1: A group of MOVE supporters spent much of the day outside
a heavily guarded Jaffray Medical Center,
waiting for word on Chuckie and the other MOVE patient,
Delbert Africa, thought to be the most seriously injured
in Tuesday's battle with police.
Delbert has a broken cheekbone
plus a bloodshot and swollen eye.
Reporter 2: MOVE members charged with the murder of Police Officer Ramp.
Reporter 3: It took hours of microscopic examination
and police have now decided that the weapon
that killed Ramp belonged to MOVE.
This firearm that I'm holding in my hand is the weapon
that fired the projectile that killed Officer Ramp.
Reporter 3: The semiautomatic rifle was one of only a number
of weapons confiscated after the shootout.
Police also found 1,600 rounds of ammunition,
both fired and unfired, gas masks,
holsters, and ammunition boxes.
Washington: I saw them bring the guns out of that basement.
So if you have 250,000 gallons of water
in the basement, no electricity, it's dark,
and there's residue of smoke and tear gas,
how thorough was the investigation
in an hour and a half? And these were
the same weapons that were sparkling clean
when Rizzo gave his press conference in that afternoon.
Rendell: The police force and the city administration
has acted, in my judgment, with...
extremely commendable restraint.
The police probably would've been legally within their rights
to have, subsequent to the shooting of Officer Ramp,
stormed the house and killed all of the people in that basement.
Do you know of any incidents where some officers may have
become a little overzealous in arresting some of the MOVE members?
I know of one instance where one of the MOVE members came out
the window with a cartridge case in one hand,
a clip, and with a knife in the other.
...with a cartridge case in one hand...
and with a knife in the other...
Where he was hit on the top of the head with a steel helmet
and was taken into custody,
if that's what you're referring to, Bill.
If that's overzealous, so be it.
But I've had it up to here with individual reporters
who are constantly our adversaries,
constantly. And I think when you go out
and you talk to these people and stir them up
and try to find out who did what where and all that,
that you're being totally unfair
to the police of this community and to the people
of this community.
And you accept at face value
absolute lies that are told to you.
You don't even get off your asses
and walk down to look where these people claim they were.
Reporter: Despite official statements claiming the police showed
great restraint in Powelton Village yesterday, these people
chanted a series of anti-Rizzo and anti-police slogans.
Peruto: The real thing that made it bad was the video.
The Fraternal Order of Police, which my father represented,
was very, very upset that they would even
arrest these officers involved in this case.
What they should've done is shot the goddamn bum,
and then there would've been no trouble today.
Reporter: Mayor Rizzo, Police Commissioner O'Neill,
Fire Commissioner Joe Rizzo, and other high-ranking officers
file past Ramp's open casket.
Then the patrolmen and women,
many of whom Ramp knew, many of whom
were just brothers and sisters in the Fraternity of Police.
And many emerged from the church with tears in their eyes.
Rizzo: I hope that their jury of their peers finds them guilty
and then they're put on the electric chair
where they belong, the people that had any part
in the killing of Jim Ramp.
Peruto: If it was testimony from eyewitnesses
from five feet away, you could reject it and say, I don't care.
If the cops say it happened this way,
that's the way it happened.
And people still believe that today in juries.
It's not that they beat his face and beat his body.
It's the fact that they got caught. Inescapably,
because it's on video.
There's no question of how it happened and what happened.
Now what are we gonna do about it?
For the first time in years, the Black community
of Philadelphia staged a major demonstration
against the Rizzo administration.
The focal point of this protest,
the pictures of Delbert Africa being beaten by police
after surrendering from the MOVE house last Tuesday.
Many of these Black people feel they themselves
could get similar treatment from the police.
George Parry: I became aware of the beating watching the 11:00 news,
and I spoke with the district attorney
and told him that, to me,
the evidence was clear that we--
we had to prosecute those three police officers.
With us right now is District Attorney Ed Rendell.
You saw the film, you heard Commissioner O'Neill's comments.
How do you see it?
Rendell: Obviously, Bill, on the face of it,
it looks like the police were overzealous in that one clip.
When we look at an incident like this,
we don't look at it as an isolated film clip.
We look at it in context with what occurred
minutes before it, and the emotion of that
and what had occurred and the violence
that was perpetrated on policemen and on firemen,
and we have to view it in that context.
Interviewer:
Well, he, you know, he ultimately agreed.
He was quite concerned. Obviously, he wanted to get
all the facts, and I agreed with that. Fine.
And after a very thorough investigation,
we then arranged to
have the police officers arrested.
And the day that they were to surrender,
I came into the office.
I said to a couple of my detectives
who were assigned to the unit, I said,
"Why don't you get on down to the police administration building
and process the officers that are supposed to surrender today?"
And everybody looked at me like
I was-- I had two heads.
And I said, "What in the world's going on?"
And they said, "Don't you know?"
Crowd: I wear blue! Take me, too! I wear blue! Take me, too!
Peruto: "I wear blue, take me, too."
That was the chant. It had started at 500 strong.
It ended up 2,500, 3,500 easy.
It was a lot of people.
The case got assigned to a bad judge,
so we thought. Stanley Kubacki,
who was a very tough judge,
and he would put people in jail for a million years.
Reporter 1: Two of the defendants testified, teary-eyed,
they feared he was laying on top
of Officer Geist's missing pistol,
that the kicks were an effort to turn Delbert over.
Reporter 2: O'Neill told the court that, "Delbert Africa wasn't a man.
"He was a savage, and with a savage,
you don't know what he'll do," says O'Neill.
O'Neill said, "Given the circumstances,
the force used by police to subdue the prisoner,"
meaning Delbert Africa, "was reasonable."
I thought we stood a very good chance
of obtaining a conviction,
but before the defense could give its summation,
and certainly before I could give my summation,
the judge came out,
and called a halt to the trial.
Boy, that judge turned out to be
the best thing that ever happened to them
because by the time the trial was over,
he, all of a sudden,
issued an order finding them not guilty,
and wouldn't even let the jury decide the case
because he thought it was so outrageous
that they were even charged. He actually,
I remember his words. "Let me be the lightning rod
"to absorb all of the criticism the city wants to hail.
"Let them hail it at me.
I am not letting this case go to a jury."
Reporter: Despite indications that the all-white jury chosen
from Dauphin County would've found the trio innocent,
Prosecutor George Parry had planned
to raise a significant credibility issue
in the closing arguments that Kubacki denied him.
Geist was apparently already kicking Delbert Africa
as his service revolver flies from his holster
because of the kicking motion.
The kicking that Geist testified that he did
to find the gun that was,
according to this photograph, not yet missing.
I am not sorry at anything I did.
The only thing I am sorry for is that James Ramp is dead,
and a lot of other police and firemen are now
out of the job, permanently injured.
Would you handle the arrest of Delbert the same way?
Yes, in those circumstances, I would.
I would do the same if I was in that same situation again.
Interviewer: Is that his place to make that sort of--
No. No.
The judge should only take a case away from the jury
when it's, as a matter of law,
there's no way the jury could've found the defendant, uh,
guilty. And here, the evidence was clear
just on the tape alone,
they could've found the defendant guilty.
The judge had no business doing it.
Interviewer: How often have you seen that sort of thing?
I've never seen a judge take it away
from a jury except for this.
Reporter: The Academy of Music,
the Civic Center, the Spectrum can all step aside
because the top showplace in town these days
is a commonplace courtroom in City Hall.
Do you think it's gonna be a pretty good show?
Do you have any ideas about what it's gonna be like?
I'm sure it'll be spectacular.
Reporter: The defendants have said they wanna be tried all together,
without a jury. Said Delbert Orr Africa,
"A jury would only be composed of racist whites
from the northeast and store-bought Negroes from downtown."
Dubin: It was a bit of a circus.
They would shout, gesticulate, scream.
Then they would either be restrained,
or, in some cases,
removed from the court room.
Reporter: The MOVE members will have to promise they'll behave
before they come back and act as their own lawyers in court.
Counsel: And the court appointed me as backup counsel
in the event that the defendants, or my client,
-should be removed. -Pomer: But now, you're taking over.
Yes. I did not want to do that, but the Supreme Court
-ordered me to do it, so I'm doing it. -You didn't want to do that?
-You could've refused to do it, right? Why not? -No.
Because I have tried to withdraw from the case.
-Well you would be in contempt of court, right? -That's right.
-And you're not willing to go in contempt of court. -Absolutely not.
The backup counsels cannot represent MOVE
better than themselves because they are not going
to risk a contempt order
telling that judge when he's wrong.
They will tell you privately,
"Yes, Judge Malmed was wrong. This was illegal."
But they will not stand up in that courtroom
and let the judge know that.
They essentially
pled guilty without pleading guilty
because they didn't wanna
try to take advantage of the system
and try to make a case that they were not guilty.
I think that the city was pretty sick of the story in general.
I know the media was sick of it.
We covered it on an incident by incident basis.
There was no real effort, in my mind,
to really dig deeper into what was going on there.
Pat Warren: Monaghan told the court
he heard Delbert Africa insist that Phil Africa
take the carbine and quote, "Shoot the pig."
Testimony was wrapped up today with police still photographer
John Eugesick on the stand.
♪ ♪
At that point, I was moving on to other things,
and I think the city of Philadelphia was, too.
Nobody cared about it.
Not the courts.
Not the news media.
The coroner's testimony
differed from the coroner's...
official report,
and the DA took out a pencil
and just changed it right in court,
and the judge allowed it!
-Good evening, I'm Vince Leonard. -And I'm Beverly Williams.
Here's what's happening. Guilty of murder in the third degree.
That's the verdict for all nine MOVE members.
The judge said guilty nine times,
and Channel 3's Kim Sedgwick was in court
when the MOVE murder verdicts came down. Kim?
Dick, it was the longest criminal trial
in Philadelphia court history
and one of the longest in the country.
Reporter: "Guilty of murder in the third degree."
That's what Judge Malmed said to each of the nine MOVE members.
"Liar! Liar!" Delbert Africa shot back at the judge
when he was brought before the bench.
"How can you find someone guilty in this illegal court?"
It was the same with all the others.
All shouting obscenities, all claiming innocence.
Emotions of the MOVE supporters were the same.
You killed my family! You killed our babies!
-You railroaded us! You broke down our house! -Woman: That's right!
You broke in our house, goddammit!
Reporter: MOVE defense attorneys were bitter, too.
As I said, I was hurt, disillusioned,
but not surprised.
In the news tonight, nine members of the radical group
MOVE are facing stiff jail terms
for their part in a shootout with Philadelphia police.
Reporter: Judge Edwin Malmed sentenced each of the nine MOVE members
to 30 to 100 years in jail, nearly the maximum sentence
that had been requested by the district attorney.
Each MOVE member cursed and threatened the judge
as he was brought into court today.
The judge then ordered each of the MOVE members removed
and their sentences were relayed
to them by their attorney.
Judge Malmed, explaining the verdict, called
the MOVE members' conduct "criminal and obscene,"
and he quietly declared that MOVE members had
"abused this community for far too long."
They have at all times maintained
they were a family and acted together.
I, therefore, took them at their own word.
If they're a family and have all acted together,
then they acted in concert, they acted jointly,
and they should all share equally
in the punishment imposed.
♪ ♪
Interviewer: Do you think they deserve to get parole?
Rendell: I'm not against people who've done
substantial time and are clearly in an age bracket
they're not gonna go out and commit serious crimes again,
getting parole. In fact, when I was governor,
I pardoned a number of lifers.
Individually, it would depend on how they did,
what the degree of evidence against them was.
I think some of them might be very appropriate,
uh, uh, subjects for parole.
For me, what it comes down to is the basic question.
Can you believe what the police said happened that day?
To me, the opportunity for a crossfire
created a significant
possibility that James Ramp was killed
by a bullet that didn't come from inside the house.
Wilson Goode: It has never been clear to me that
the police got it right, that the...
district attorney got it right,
that the judges got it right,
that the sentences were proper.
And as I've looked at it
in hindsight over the years,
I am convinced that they did not get it right.
That the Officer Ramp
died from friendly fire.
♪ ♪
I'm willing to do whatever. If we, if that means--
set it up so that we can get pardon papers up to them,
and they do that. If that means that they-- if we set it up
where we try to get the DA's office to help us out.
If that means that we hire a lawyer, 10 lawyers,
an investigator, whatever.
If that means that we just beat the drum and try to get people
to, to wake up their neighbors
or wake up their, uh, their, their congressmen
or senators or whatever.
I'm a guy who's saying
do whatever it takes,
do all that it takes
because those people that are in prison are dying in there.
Phil didn't make it to 40.
The system-- Whatever was happening with him,
or the people who was feeding him that poison
up at them prisons that they call water.
They're feeding him that swill that they call food,
or that-- yeah, I mean, like, that, that stuff...
you know... (sighs)
What can you do? You just gotta keep on pushing.
Keep on exposing the system for the wrongs in it.
If it takes 10 years, if it takes 20 years.
It could take-- it could take every single one of their lives.
♪ ♪
Crowd: Larry! Larry! Larry!
(chanting continues)
-(applause) -Larry Krasner: This is not
another story about the history of kings and queens.
This is a story about a movement.
-Man: That's right! -(cheering)
And this is a movement that is tired
of seeing a system that has systematically picked
on poor people,
primarily Black and brown people.
(cheering)
This is a mandate for a movement
that is loudly telling
government what it wants, and what it wants
is criminal justice reform
in ways that require transformational change
within the Philadelphia District Attorney's office.
(cheering)
So, in terms of the parole process,
Krasner's office, the DA's office, can make--
can either oppose parole or not oppose,
and so that recommendation is significant in that aspect.
And then also, he's campaigned on this
open files policy, and specifically around the...
Conviction Integrity Unit. They call it
the Conviction Review Unit in Philadelphia,
wherein they would--
the person who's been convicted
is entitled to full access
to whatever's in the DA files, and we know they...
there must be some information that's
not been released to the public in the MOVE cases,
and that the--
The police destroyed the house and they...
covered up information, covered up evidence,
and it's important that we see what's in there,
so that's one way that Krasner's office can
ex-- help expose the truth on this so that some sort of
just resolution can come out of it.
♪ ♪
And it's written to Leo Dunn, Chairman of the Pennsylvania
Board of Probation and Parole.
It says, "On behalf of District Attorney Lawrence Krasner,
"I write to inform you and the Board that I recommend that
"Ms. Debbie Sims Africa be paroled.
"Ms. Sims Africa has been in custody for 39 years
"and has not had a single misconduct since 1995.
"Her prison record shows that she has made use of her time
"in custody, completing 2,113 hours
"of vocational training, 60 hours of academic training
"and attaining her cosmetology license.
"She is now 61 years old.
"In short, I am confident that she will not pose a threat
"to the Philadelphia community to which she wishes to return.
"While Ms. Sims Africa's crimes were very serious,
her continued incarceration does not make our city safer."
And it's pretty much the same thing for Janet
and for Janine.
♪ ♪
Interviewer: Do you think they'll be paroled in May?
No. I think the parole board sees itself as
cops and part of the brotherhood.
And they're carrying out,
um, their mission that anybody convicted
of homicide of a police officer
should be eternally punished.
And that's what it's been for nine years,
and I don't think a more persuasive parole packet is
going to change that deeply entrenched attitude.
Which is why it's important to build up the record
so as to establish that the denial of parole
is violating their constitutional rights.
♪ ♪
Interviewer: Mike, hello?
Mike (on phone):
Interviewer: Yeah.
♪ ♪
Mom. How you doing?
-I'm alright, how you? -(indistinct phone chatter)
Woman: Speaker phone.
Woman: Is it on speaker phone?
-You got your what? -Woman: What?
(indistinct)
-Her what? -Hold up, hold up.
You got your green sheet?
-Woman: What's that? -That's your, what?
Yeah?
(laughter, screaming)
Woman: Oh, Debbie coming home!
(laughter)
Woman: Long live John Africa!
(laughter, shouting continue)
Woman: Josh is happy! Look at Josh!
(cheering)
My mom said, "Tell your dad...
-He can't help it. -"to control hisself
"'cause...
being extremely happy can cause heart attacks, too."
-Man: Want a strawberry? -Woman: Is this for your mom?
I don't know!
♪ ♪
We're picking her up tomorrow, 7:00 in the morning.
Best news I've ever heard in my life.
This is the best news that I've ever heard in my life.
By far.
-No, she ain't wearing that. -Woman: Then what should we get?
That one is perfect. Look at it. Robes are like shoes!
They're universal. They go with anything.
We don't have any time. Get the damn thing, let's get the...
-...heck outta here. -Alright. Calm yourself down.
-Interviewer: How do you feel? -(Mike laughing)
Mike: Beside myself.
I don't even know what to feel.
There's so many things happening.
I can't even really fully process it yet.
And I always say I don't believe it
until she's in my car.
Forty years.
♪ ♪
♪ Tell the world I'm coming... ♪
Mm.
("Coming Home" by Diddy playing on the radio)
♪ I never felt so strong ♪
♪ That feeling like there's nothing I can't try ♪
(laughing)
(singing with the radio): Put your hands high!
Ah, man!
♪ If you're with me put your hands high ♪
(indistinct)
(song continues)
I have her! We have her!
The package is delivered! She's in the car!
♪ ♪
Oh! Oh my God, they're so-- Look at that!
♪
(cheering)
(indistinct chatter)
(chatter continues)
It's nice and sunny in here, too!
Oh my god!
Okay, I'm gonna cut the cake. Hey, wait a minute.
I better not pick up that knife on that camera.
(laughter)
Mike: You can hold the kitchen knife.
(laughter)
Debbie Africa: I've been in prison almost 40 years and, um,
I was released on Friday--
Saturday. Saturday, and, um,
I still don't think I've actually caught up
with my emotions on how happy it makes me feel,
seeing my family and being--
I should say united with my son
because I've never been with him.
I had him in my prison cell when I was in, uh,
the House of Correction, and this is the first time
we've ever been together in all those years.
-Mike: Mm. -(shutters snapping)
But-- (clears throat)
And although, if I felt,
you know, excited and overwhelmed and happy
to see everybody that came up to pick me up on Saturday,
I still felt, you know,
incomplete, and it just wasn't--
It shouldn't have been the fact that I left prison,
and my sisters, Janine and Janet, didn't
because we came in on the same charges,
we were arraigned the same,
we, um, we had the same hits
and everything, the same charges,
but when it came time to get out of prison,
they didn't do that the same.
So, my name is Mike Africa Jr.
As you know, this is my mother right here and, um,
our family has been experienced,
the MOVE organization has experienced so much,
um, hate and anger from the system and, um,
this is a small victory, but it is a victory.
But I say a small victory because our family
is still separated. We're still incomplete.
My father is still in prison.
He was in prison-- He was arrested with my mother
and the rest of the MOVE Nine and he's still in prison, too.
I talked to my dad today.
Every time, every time something happen, my dad,
like, come up with a theme song for it,
the experience that he's experiencing at the time.
(laughs) And he got this thing...
He says, um,
so for this one, he says,
he said, "Man." He said,
"Tell your mom that I--
that I said I got a new song." And I said, "What's that?"
He said, "Hold on, I'm coming."
He comes up in September 2018,
so the same process we used for her, we're gonna use for him.
But only difference is we're gonna need more
support for him
because people see men as different than women.
So they-- he's gonna need more support
than she, she needed.
♪ ♪
-Interviewer: Do you think he'll get out? -Do I think my dad'll get out?
I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful.
I believe that if we have the pressure,
the same kind of pressure that we applied
for my mom, and if he can
understand the importance of...
the way of cooperation,
and (clears throat)-- and we can get
the letters that we need to have written from people
and support,
showing their support for him,
I think that we have a really good shot.
Really good shot.
♪ ♪
Mike (on phone):
So he took the test.
It was all negative. He passed the test.
Everything's good. So now, it's just...
we're awaiting word.
♪ ♪
Imagine being like...
stuck in-- stuck in traffic.
Like, you're driving your car. You're headed home from work
after working a long 12-hour day,
breaking your back, trying to get your jobs done
so that you can get your check for your family.
And you get in the car,
drive it for about 10 minutes,
and then you get stuck in traffic.
And you're just like stuck,
gridlock, parking lot. That shit'll drive you crazy.
Like, what the fuck? Why are these cars not moving, right?
Imagine being stuck like that for 40 years.
Forty years.
♪ ♪
Mike Africa Sr.: First time I seen Mike,
he was maybe six months old.
At that time, down Holmesburg, there was no contact visits,
so I was tapping on the window. "Hey, man.
Hey, Mike. Hey, hey." And he was just looking.
It was just before we got sent upstate.
He's 3. I asked him what his name was,
and he said Michael.
I said, "You know what my name is?" He said, "Yeah, Michael."
I said, "You know why we have the same name?" I said,
"Because you're my son." And he asked me,
"Can you sneak home with us?" (laughs)
♪ ♪
It seemed that as soon as he could comprehend
that they had held his parents
and that he could
do something about it, and he tried.
(inaudible)
Yesterday was a culmination of his efforts.
You know, as well as a lot of people's, but.
(birds chirping)
You know, of course I wanted to be free.
But, uh...
knowing what it would mean to him,
to our family, you know...
knowing how much effort, you know,
he put his whole...
Wait a minute, stop.
(sniffs)
He has such a good heart, man.
And I didn't want his whole life to be...
♪ ♪
um...
just something that's wrapped up...
in...
trying to free us, man.
(inaudible)
I was so glad for Mike yesterday.
You know, of course I wanted to be free,
but I was so glad that he didn't have that...
that burden on him anymore, man.
(inaudible)
♪ ♪
I'm glad me and his mom is out, you know,
not just because we're free,
but, you know, it freed him.
♪
-It's finally here. -Yep. And I'll tell you,
I can go through the rest of my life like this, really.
-I bet you can! -I ain't got that much long to live though, so...
-What? Why would you say that? -(laughing)
-Why-- Why would you say that? -I'm just playing.
♪ ♪
(laughing)
This cake has got to be good.
Did you count your 10 eggs?
I got at least 25. Shit, that's a long time.
-Why would she say that?! -(laughing)
Maybe he can still teach me some things.
I'm sure I'll be teaching him a lot of things.
Hey, Dad! Did you ever see one of these before?
(laughing)
-(laughing) -Mike: What the hell are you doing?
-Are you trying to pose? -I don't know.
Look at Grandma there.
We met when we was about 14.
-Who wouldn't love her in this hat? Look at this hat. -(laughing)
Only a husband who loves his wife
would love her in this hat. (laughs)
Oh, um, well I remember when I was born, right?
-You remember when you was born? (laughs) -I mean--
-No, I don't remember when I was born. -I know what you mean.
♪ ♪
♪ I told my mama she was priceless ♪
♪ She told me she wanted the good life ♪
♪ I told my mama I'ma give you that ♪
♪ She said she wanna live her best life, no strife ♪
♪ I said yo, Mama, you deserve it all ♪
♪ She said she really didn't want much ♪
♪ I asked her what you want for me to do? She said ♪
♪ You gave me what I want because I'm home with you ♪
♪ Hey! Fly, baby... ♪
Forty-two years of this thing, and I said...
I hated to see
-them still there, you know? But... -Right.
-It's good to be home. It's good to be home. -Mm-hmm.
It's good to be with family, with friends.
And put that, that activity,
(laughs) that prison activity behind me.
-I'm glad. I'm ready. -(indistinct)
You'll never be back at Dallas.
Ah! I told, I told, uh,
Chaplain Hoke, I said, "I'll be back to free somebody else."