When US police dropped explosives on a Philadelphia home

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On 13 May 1985 a police helicopter dropped explosives on a house in residential Philadelphia, in an attempt to end a stand-off with radical black activists from an organisaton called MOVE. Fire spread quickly through the surrounding buildings and 11 people died, including five children. All the victims belonged to MOVE. A total of sixty houses in the area were also burnt or badly damaged in the botched police operation. Mike Lanchin speaks to Mike Africa, who lost his great uncle and a cousin in the fire, and to the former Philadelphia reporter, Linn Washington.

Photo: Aerial view of smoke rising from smouldering rubble in Osage Avenue, West Philadelphia, May 1985 (Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast on the BBC World Service,
0:46.8	first-hand accounts of events that have shaped our world.
0:49.8	I'm Mike Lanchin. Today we're going back to 1985 when police in the US City of Philadelphia
0:56.6	dropped explosives onto a residential house in a botched operation to try to arrest a group of radical black activists.
1:04.8	11 people, including five children, died as a massive fire spread throughout the whole neighborhood.
1:11.7	I've been hearing from two people about the shocking events of that day.
1:17.7	It's early morning, May 13th, 1985 and local Philadelphia reporter Lynn Washington is at home fast asleep.
1:25.6	You know the phone rings startles me the caller just said Lynn get over here it going down. I knew exactly what he was talking about.
1:35.8	Lynn rushes to get dressed, gets on his motor bike, and drives across town to Osage Avenue,
1:41.6	a street in a black residential neighborhood in West Philadelphia.
1:45.6	The area was sealed off already. Police were trying to, you know, remove cars and I guess around
1:51.9	6.30 in the morning or so the shooting started.
1:56.4	Years of tension between the Philadelphia police and a group of black activists,
2:01.2	all members of a radical organization called Move had come to a head.
2:06.4	Seven adults, all members of Move, together with six of their children, were barricaded
2:11.9	inside a fortified house on Osage Avenue, refusing to come out.
	...

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