May 13th, 1985 is a day that many say lives in Philadelphia infamy. It’s the day the city dropped a bomb on the group “MOVE,” killing adults and children. NBC10’s Rosemary Connors reports as the city opens a new education exhibit to remember and learn from the tragedy.
Decades after police ordered the bombing of a home in 1985 that killed five children and six adults, the City of Philadelphia is looking to honor the victims and highlight the history of the MOVE bombing in a different way.
It wasn't until 2022 that the city acknowledged the bombing was not an accident and it was a homicide.
On Tuesday, in a news release, the city revealed a new exhibit entitled Remembering MOVE: May 13, 1985 about the history of the 1985 bombing on Osage Avenue.
This permanent exhibit was created by the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy using documentary photography and other resources to showcase the history of the MOVE bombing.
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The exhibit features more than 120 public documents, including reports, news articles, videos, books and biographies. The sources include the Charles L. Blockson Afro American Collection, Temple University Libraries; The Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries; The Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University; The City of Philadelphia, Department of Records – City Archives; the Jubilee School and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“My hope is that Remembering MOVE will inspire civic dialogue about Philadelphia’s controversial past and strive to prevent such a tragedy from happening again,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in a news release.
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“Remembering MOVE is a snapshot of what happened on May 13, 1985, and the key events that led to it,” Managing Director Tumar Alexander said in a statement. “We are not a museum, but within our capacity, we’ve created an informative exhibit, through publicly available non-biased sources.”
On May 13, 1985, the City of Philadelphia ordered the bombing of a home housing members of the revolutionary, back-to-nature group in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood following a standoff and shootout with police. The bombing culminated with a city block going up in flames.
In 2021, MOVE members learned that that decades ago, the city medical examiner gave human remains from the bombing site to Penn Museum for identification, sparking protests and outrage.
Former health commissioner Thomas Farley later revealed that he had ordered the remains, thought to be bone fragments, cremated in 2017. However, the remains were not destroyed after all. A subordinate of Farley's in 2017 decided not to follow the commissioner's orders and saved the remains, a lawyer involved with the family of the victims said.
The ordeal led to Farley’s ouster.
Some of the remains were eventually returned to other members of the Africa family. In August, the city returned the remains of two child victims of the bombing to their brother.
The exhibit was made in response to an independent report by Dechert LLP and Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads LLP made public in June 2022 - this report asked the city of Philadelphia to make an effort to educate people about the bombing.
The exhibit is located in the lobby of the Municipal Services Building, 1401 John F Kennedy Blvd. It can be viewed Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information on this new exhibit visit creativephl.org.
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