Uncover - S20 "The Africas VS. America" E2: The Making of John Africa (GI John)

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

A quiet and reclusive young man is conscripted to war in Korea and returns having been made anew. Vincent Leaphart becomes the enigmatic John Africa, whose revolutionary vision will prove irresistible to followers seeking a new way of living. But what begins as a movement concerned with the protection of all life, will gradually turn to nonviolent direct action and large-scale civil disobedience in reaction to the state. This is the origin story of John Africa, leader of what will soon become known as MOVE.The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.

When was the last time you said, hmm, I never thought about it that way? The Current aims to give you that moment every single day. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and our award-winning team brings you stories and conversations to expand your worldview. Sometimes they connect to the news of the day, sometimes to the issues of our time. And you'll hear all kinds of people on The Current, from best-selling authors to the Prime Minister to maybe your neighbor. Find us wherever you get your podcasts now, including YouTube. I'll talk to you soon.

This is a CBC Podcast. Just a heads up, this episode includes explicit language. Where is German Africa? That's organization business right now. This is the voice of MOVE's Minister of Confrontation and Security, a man named Delbert Africa. He's one of MOVE's original members. What do you mean it's organization business?

You're asking people to believe in the philosophy of this man. Why can't he come forth and speak for himself? Delbert is speaking with journalist Ademola Eculona inside this big Victorian house, its windows all boarded up. It's 1978, and this is the organization's headquarters. 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, all right?

Not the home that would be bombed in 1985, but MOVE's original headquarters in the Powhatan Village district of West Philadelphia. What we're saying is that for security reasons, John Africa is whereabouts of our organization business, and we will keep it that way. Ekulona is here to learn about MOVE, but also about a man who to this point

may as well have been a ghost. 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. MOVE's founder, John Africa. We, the members of MOVE, have a great reverence for the man, for the founder of this organization.

That has nothing to do with any mysticalness. He ain't asking people to worship him. All he's asking people to do is be right. And for that, his presence isn't required. people to do is be right. And for that, his presence isn't required. We see John Africa then, rather we saw John Africa in the same way that people saw Jesus Christ because of his carpentry, because of his simple way of living and so forth. Now we know that John Africa is the man who can explain Jesus Christ. that John Africa is the man who can't explain Jesus Christ.

John Africa was many things to many people. Anarchist, animal lover, peacemaker, criminal, nuisance, genius, revolutionary, terrorist. How old is John Africa? John Africa is one. One level, one greater life. Everything you see, the sun, the air, the water that you drink of, all of that is John Africa. A man as enigmatic in life as he was in death. To some, John Africa was a messiah.

But before that, he was a little boy named Vincent Leapheart. I'm Matthew Amaha, and this is The Africa's Versus America. Chapter 2. The Making of John Africa. This is why I wanted to bring you here. Keep going down. This is the new garage parking lot. I'm driving around West Philadelphia with Mike Africa Jr. A map would tell you we're in a neighborhood called Mantua. But around here, they call it the bottom. The bottom is rock bottom.

There is no lower or poorer section of West Philly than the bottom. It's an area of mostly black folks, many of them descendants of those who migrated up to Philly from the South during Jim Crow. This is where Mike grew up. This is called Over the Bridge.

If you want to get into some real violent shit, come across the bridge. If you want to get into some drugs, come across the bridge. Mike is taking me to John Africa's childhood home. But first, a detour. Bangorite at the Kona.

We cross a short bridge, Bangorite, and suddenly we're in front of the Philadelphia Zoo, the oldest zoo in the country. So this is how close, so it, oh wow, wow. Yeah, that's why I wanted to bring you here, so you can see like, you know. So close. Yeah.

John Africa's house wasn't far from here. He could hear the animals. Like it kept him up in the middle of the night and shit bothered him. All the animals in the zoo are jumping up and down for you, asking you to be sure to plan to visit the zoo as soon as you can. It's still a popular spot, the sprawling 19th century zoo. There's a whole scene here. There's kids, families, concession stands,

and this imposing statue called the Dying Lioness. You see how that lion has an arrow, a broken arrow, and it's stabbed in her back? And then you got the big lion standing there over top of her trying to, like, you know, ward off any... That's his wife, and then the got the big lion standing there over top of her trying to like you know ward off any hit that's his wife and then the little baby cubs is like climbing up on her like mom mom don't die you know what i'm saying that's exactly what the fuck they saw the people that was hunting them animals saw when they built this fucking zoo because that's what they had to do to those

animals to get them in this fucking cage. In this fucking prison. How far away from here was John Heffler from? I'm about to show you. Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. Okay. All right, stop right here. Just pull over. This house was right here.

We've pulled out by an empty lot. Now it's a community garden. This is where it was. Now it's a community garden. This is where it was. There's no house here now, but back in the 1930s, this plot of land was home to a big, loving family. John Africa's family.

They were known as the Leaphearts then, and John Africa went by Vincent. His parents had fled the racial violence of Georgia and headed north to this neighborhood that was then overflowing with energy and ambition. Yeah. So your father grows up down the street from Drought Africa. Your grandmother lives down the street from Drought Africa. You know, Black people don't go that far from each other. What you're about to hear is the story the Move family tells itself about its founder.

What you're about to hear is the story the Move family tells itself about its founder. Vincent was a boy who lived at the feet of his mother, Lenny May. Stuck to her hip. It was exactly like that. You know, little, little boy. Right there with her while she's cooking in the kitchen, you know. Just hung around. He loved being around her.

He was one of ten kids, six boys, four girls. And as the second eldest of the boys, he was a help to Lenny May as more and more children arrived. But of all the kids, it was Vincent who had the toughest time orienting himself to life outside the home. He was a tiny, rail-thin boy who had been diagnosed as, quote, orthogenically backward. These days, we'd just say that Vincent had a learning disability.

But back then, little Black boys who didn't quite fit in tended to be saddled with this sort of racist pseudoscience. They teased him about it. Just friendly, you know, brother and sister teasing type stuff. But it wasn't a big deal. You know, they changed the OB from orthogenically backwards and they renamed it and said oddball. You OB, you oddball. You know, that kind of thing.

Vincent's love of nature also set him apart. He loved the trees. Sometimes, like, the kids would be at the park and they'd be playing and he stopped running to look at the trees. Right. And then everybody looking. Vinny, what you doing? Vinny, come on. Hurry up. Vinny, come on. And he might just be staring and mesmerized by the tree. And then they still playing and then they go back to find out what he's doing and he's just standing there by the tree. And then they still playing and then they go back to find out what he's doing and he's just standing there hugging the tree. He was a

literal tree hugger. And it wasn't just trees. He always loved animals. Animals were attracted to him. So that zoo a few blocks away, Vincent saw it as a prison and it haunted him. They had a three-story house. If you're in So that zoo a few blocks away, Vincent saw it as a prison.

And it haunted him. They had a three-story house. If you're in the three-story bedroom, in the back bedroom, you can see the zoo. And you can see the animals being crated in. And if you listen, especially at night, you can hear them. And you can hear them crying. You can hear them mourning. You can hear them. And you can hear them crying. You can hear them mourning. You can hear them. Vincent was a deeply curious child, but learning bound up in rules and formulas and

authority, it just wasn't for him. You know, you're five years old and you're taken away from your mother and your father, and you're put into this place where all the people are strangers. And there's this parental figure telling you what to do. And you can't go to the bathroom when you want. And if you're hungry, you've got to wait to eat and then have to focus and pay attention on this unnaturalness of this thing that they call education. It gave him headaches. Eventually, Vincent was sent to Octavius V. Cato Disciplinary School. It was a school for kids with learning disabilities and behavioral issues.

Cato in Philly had the kind of reputation that Compton has in the U.S. When you say Compton, everybody think of NWA, violence. In Philly, if you found out that somebody was from Cato, yeah, you would approach them a little bit differently. Mike says Cato was supposed to rehabilitate kids like Vincent, to smarten them up, but it just felt unnatural. He'd say, if the trees don't have to go to school to do their job, why I got to go to school?

Home with Lenny May is where he wanted to be. But the silver lining of Cato was that the school didn't seem to care if Vincent showed up or not. So for the most part, he just didn't. I think that for him, it might have been a blessing in disguise. Because he loved being at home. And he got a chance to spend more time with his mom, who he adored. He loved his mother. The Leapheart home was a sanctuary. No white picket fence or anything. But for years, the family lived a version of the Black American dream. But the bottom, like areas I grew up

in, is best described as criminogenic, which basically means an environment where poverty breeds crime. And for the Leaphearts, it wouldn't be long before the conditions of the neighborhood would leave their mark. In 1942, Vincent's older brother, Frederick Jr., is shot dead in a case of mistaken identity. Vincent's sister, Louise Louise would later write, quote, what I remember most, though, about that time was my mother. I can see her now, sitting quietly by that wood stove at the end of the day, grieving for her firstborn. Then in 1950, Lenny May, she's diagnosed with pneumonia. She's sent to the hospital for what should have been routine treatment. But instead, her health quickly deteriorates.

Lenny May would never make it home. She was 42. He was devastated. It was like, you know, hard to understand. Vincent was just 19 years old and suddenly without his North Star. And he had a lot of brothers and sisters. It was hard on him. It was heavy for him. And a lot of responsibility that he took on, you know, that he was happy to do, to take on. But the loss of his mother was, you know,

something that you'd never get over. Vincent felt Lenny May was victim of a negligent healthcare system. One that treated poor Black people, especially poor Black women, as disposable. He saw the circumstances surrounding her death as deeply suspicious, that more would have been done had she been white. This is something that would go on to inform his thinking later in life, but for now, he and his family had more immediate concerns.

His little baby brothers, they're babies. So it's like, I got to soak up these tears and deal with my baby brother so I can keep him going, keep formula in his bottle. That's a hell of an experience, man. As Vincent's family is dealing with this grief, his father turns to the bottle, which makes work increasingly difficult.

And joblessness for Black people in Philadelphia was a problem. The father is brokenhearted and, you know, he can't do anything. He can't eat, he can't sleep, he can't work. His best friend, his love of his life is gone. And Mike says with no money coming into the house, the court begins the process of formally separating the Leapheart kids and placing them with other families. Vincent is now the oldest of the surviving boys. It's 1952. He's 21 years old with no formal education and few job prospects.

He was like, I'll do whatever I got to do to keep my family together. And the only thing that was available was going to the military. And at the time, the military was drafting young Black men. Spilling out of giant transports, paratroops take part in the biggest training exercises since the armistice. By this point, America was two years into a brutal war in Korea. American soldiers sharpen airborne striking power in Operation Backdoor. Vincent's father was ferociously anti-war and anti-militarism.

He believed the nation was using young black men as cannon fodder. And he wasn't alone, either. Thousands of black people across the country were publicly objecting to and outright refusing military service. It's worth noting here that Benjamin Franklin High School, Vincent's original high school, is said to have produced the highest rate of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam because the average student there qualified as a low-IQ soldier and as such was sent to the front line.

But back when Vincent is conscripted to Korea, he's so desperate for work that he agrees to go. He saw brothers and sisters being killed and animals being burned alive and waters being polluted and mountains being decimated. Animal wildlife. It's in Korea that Vincent began to understand the war machine as part of a more sophisticated system. That war drove home a lot and made a hell of an impression on him about what the government is about. And it angered him. And this war, like all others, was built on the identification of an enemy that needed eliminating. For a while there, Vincent wouldn't encounter any of his so-called enemy. But then he was captured. And his captors, they didn't really know what to make of him.

Mike says Vincent's grandmother was Native American and his grandfather was German. So the Leaphearts were Black, but they were fair-skinned and had straight hair, which made them ambiguous to people. So was this a Black man, an American, or something else altogether? The Koreans thought he was one of them because his hair texture was like that. His eyes, his eyes were black. Most Americans captured in North Korea were subject to horrific treatment, but not Vincent. According to the family, it was almost like a cultural exchange.

They shared food and late-night discussion. Mike says Vincent realized the Koreans weren't necessarily anti-American. They were just simply defending themselves against America. His captors never hurt him. And throughout his time in Korea, Vincent Liebhardt never fired his gun. You have to understand, too, that the black GI experience was a microcosm of the black experience in America. Carrying a rifle in the infantry is just like pushing a broom in civilian life. The black man doesn't escape it in the infantry for the same reasons he doesn't escape it on the outside. Inferior education and opportunities in a racist society. inferior education and opportunities in a racist society.

The job provided little safety from the racist indignities black servicemen had suffered at home. Vincent Liebhardt's time in Korea came more than a decade before Dr. Martin Luther King famously declared the U.S. military the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. But it's those same revelations that Vincent is now coming to on his own. On war, he would later write, quote, panic and terror grip you like hot nails, tearing through thoughts of the mind like a bullet, running for safety and into more shrapnel. So it's like, something wrong here.

We got to do something different different and then you start to relate it to other stuff the machine that creates the war is the same machine that creates the prisons and the same machine that creates the police and the same machine that creates poverty it's all the same And it needs to be destroyed. over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

By the time Vincent gets back from the war, he's in his early 20s. He's a sartorially motivated young man, sharp as hell, dressed in tailored clothes. His older sister Louise would later write that growing up, she and her sisters couldn't get into the family bathroom because he'd be in there for so long. Quote, shirt just right, tie just right, shoes all shined. Vincent and his brother Alfonso were inseparable. They looked and dressed just like one another. One day, says Mike, the brothers meet a pair of sisters, Fanny and Dottie. They're from the same neighborhood in West Philly. Dottie, They're from the same neighborhood in West Philly.

Dottie, Dorothy, is beautiful and sophisticated, and she and Vincent fall in love, and they're soon married. And by the way, Alfonso and Fanny, they also get married. But when Vincent moves to New York City to study interior decorating of all things, Dorothy stays back in Philly. During this time, Vincent is also a drummer, and he's playing with the giants of his time. He really loved jazz music.

And Miles and Arnett and all of them, like, he, yeah, he played with them. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman. But music, like his time at war, provided him little escape from the racism of the day. Miles Davis was beaten bloody by the NYPD outside of a venue he was about to play just after releasing his masterwork, Kind of Blue. John Africa found out about that when he heard about that. And these are his friends.

He was fucked up. And he was mad about it. He wanted to lash out. He appreciated the music. He liked the sound of it. And he liked being in that world. He liked being in that world. Until he got tired of it. Then he put his drumsticks down and said,

I ain't doing this shit no more. And then he never did it again. Vincent's radicalization is now underway. And he's ready to move back home to start a life with Dorothy. He really wanted children. And they tried for years.

And they, you know, there would be times where they would, you know, think they're pregnant and be pregnant for times. And it always ended in a false hope. So she wanted to, like, try other things and other ways. Dorothy turns to a group known as the Kingdom of Yahweh,

an obscure religious organization led by a white man who lived in a commune in the middle of the country. He talked about reincarnation and pyramids, you know, that kind of thing. Though Vincent never formally joined the church, there was no denying that some of what he was hearing just felt right. You know how sometimes you can have certain things, but then somebody put an explanation to what you're feeling, so certain parts of it just worked.

But after six years together, there would be no miracle. The fact that they couldn't have kids together. I think that's why they broke up. Like, they didn't want to stand in each other's way. Mike begins to tell me some of the names Vincent and Dottie had picked out for the children that they were never able to have.

And then he stops himself. These are the kinds of intimate details he spent his life protecting. You got to understand too, Matt, like you're hearing me say things that are very personal to my family. And so like, sometimes I just, like I've already said more than my family will want me to say. You know what I mean? And I'm doing it in a way where it's like free flowing and natural.

But it's really not easy for me to tell you these things. These are our memories and this is our heritage and our legacy. For the last few years, it's fallen to Mike Africa Jr. as the public face of MOVE to protect his family's history from the curiosities of the press. Many in MOVE see the media as an extension of the state, so they've done their best to keep a safe distance. Some of Mike's trust in me here, I think, comes down to our shared experiences. I know what it means to be disenchanted by the press. In Toronto, I grew up watching our local media parachute into communities like mine

to steal stories and collaborate with the police, to villainize the victims of poverty and violence. Or at least that's what it felt like. I also know what it means to be a young Black journalist today and face pressure from news executives eager to use my identity in order to win the trust of folks otherwise unwilling to speak with them. I'm familiar with both sides of the editorial process, which might explain why Mike felt compelled to share the intimate details of his family's story,

and specifically this origin story of John Africa, and is allowing us, really for the first time, to add it to the public record. So the trust here goes both ways. I'm trusting him to deliver to us a true accounting of an otherwise largely unknown man, and he's trusting me to be honest and fair with his most prized possession, his family lore. honest and fair with his most prized possession, his family lore. I feel like CBC can do something with it that could be, you know, a certain thing and whatever. So I'm accepting it and doing it.

But some of this shit really tears me up talking about. Good evening. Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. The 1960s are a decade of great change. You have enfranchisement to voting rights and labor rights, but these changes were followed by a great backlash from white America. but these changes were followed by a great backlash from white America. For five days in April 1968, the black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. burned. U.S. soldiers were deployed to protect the White House and the Capitol. The military wanted to go further by entering and taking control of black neighborhoods.

The pushback was immediate. Now I want to talk to Black people across this country. We have to move into a position where we can define terms for what we want them to be, not what racist white society wants it to be. By the conclusion of the 1960s, America is in a moment of transition, especially Black America. So much of the great hope and promise of the civil rights movement had fallen in on itself after years of subversion from the state. Medgar Evers had been murdered. This event, this tragic occurrence.

Malcolm X had been murdered. Two men approached the speaker's rostrum and discharged shots at him. Dr. King had been murdered. Martin Luther King, 20 minutes ago, died. And Fred Hampton had been murdered. Martin Luther King, 20 minutes ago, died. And Fred Hampton had been murdered. You're going to decide whether or not Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were the victims of premeditated murder. For some Black folks, the collapse of the civil rights movement, it necessitated militancy. The Black Power era was now here.

The politics of nonviolence were now replaced by self-determinism and self-defense. The politics of compromise was now off the table, and revolutionary violence was on it. Here's activist Mohamed Kenyatta speaking at a press conference following the release of two police officers accused of shooting a Black man in Philadelphia. We have to take the position that any Black person who inflicts any injury, up to and including death, on any police officer in the Black community is clearly carrying out an act of

justifiable homicide. So what we are saying is this, if we are to be killed, then any killing that is done in retaliation is justifiable homicide. And as the nation changed and changed again, so did Vincent. You know, when you're changing your name, you're shedding that other thing. And while he didn't have a problem with Vincent, the Lee part, that part, he wasn't cool with. You know, he said that it was a German name and he didn't want people to think that a German was responsible for the work that he did. So he did what so many African Americans did

once they found liberation. He coronated himself with a new name. He chose John for commonness. To do the work to be right and all of that, it doesn't take anything special. He said God is as common as dirt. And the name that he chose is common. We're all the same. You know, we're all each other.

And the reason he changed it to Africa is because he wanted it to be known and clear for our people that Africa is the origin of humans. The act of renaming oneself is storied in the African-American tradition and dates back to the plantation. By the 1960s, the practice wasn't uncommon among Black activists. By the 1960s, the practice wasn't uncommon among Black activists. The thing you are called by others animates so much about who you are. Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali. Luwalsinder becomes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Joanne Chesimard becomes Asada Shakur. And yes, Malcolm Little becomes Malcolm X. This is him in 1963 1963 speaking to WMAQ TV Channel 5 in Chicago, a show called City Desk. What is your real name? Malcolm. Malcolm X. Is that your legal name? As far as I'm concerned, it's my legal name.

Have you been to court to establish the story? I didn't have to go to court to be called Murphy or Jones or Smith. Excuse me for answering you this way. If a Chinese person were to say his name was Patrick Murphy, you would look at him like he's insane, because Murphy is an Irish name, a European name, or the name that has a Caucasian or white background.

When you see a Negro today who's named Johnson, if you go back in his history, you'll find that he was once his grandfather, or one of his forefathers was owned by a white man who was named Johnson. If you go back in his history, you'll find that he was once his grandfather, or one of his forefathers was owned by a white man who was named Johnson. Would you mind telling me what your father's last name was? My father didn't know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather, and his grandfather got it from his grandfather, who got it from the slave master.

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. Through these years of social change, there are a number of different philosophical paths to freedom for Black people. There's Black nationalism, Black anarchism, Black Marxism, the Black church, the Black Muslims, and Black conservatism, to name a few.

And John Africa, he's aware of all of them. So Malcolm X, through the early 1960s, has a very particular kind of viewpoint as it relates to the Nation of Islam and is kind of preaching publicly about white devils, about the idea that Black people may want to create their own colony within the United States. There's like a particular brand of Black nationalism.

King is preaching a version of redemptive suffering, this idea that others may find salvation through your own suffering related to Christ and Christianity and all that. And these are two polar opposite viewpoints. Where would someone like John Africa fall on this spectrum? It wouldn't fit in between either one of them, really. John Africa's thing was destroy the whole system.

All of it. Burn that shit down the whole system. All of it. Burn that shit down to the ground. All of it. All of it and all the ideas that created it, too. And if anybody get in your way, get rid of them motherfuckers, too. Around this time, John Africa was known to fall into extended monologues

about the state of the world and his newfound belief system. People in his neighborhood would come to hear him speak. John Africa was a jukebox of political theory and revolutionary energy. The few accounts of John Africa that do exist describe him as a powerful orator, a diminutive man with a deep-barreled baritone. orator, a diminutive man with a deep-barreled baritone. And before long, he's dictating these rants to an audience where at least one person would be transcribing for posterity. Stuff like this. Hey Matt, check this out. Politicians solicit the indulgence of false patriotism and leave you to mourn the death of his victims. You'd be writing this stuff down as he's talking. You read it back to him and you say, no, take that part out.

And then he'd say it again in another way. It was very much a natural process. Slowly, John Africa is building the foundations of what would become the MOVE philosophy, a philosophy that centers around his concept of the system. To John Africa's mind, the system was the terrible school that he was sent to because of his learning disability. The system was the hospital that let his mother die. The system was the state trying to break his family up,

the government that caused so much death and destruction in Korea and locked animals away in cages. And the system was what created the conditions of poverty in the bottom. It was prisons, politicians, the grocery store, cars, technology, the law, basically all of modern society, which he felt to be morally bankrupt and leading humankind toward inevitable catastrophe. Eventually, this would all be consolidated into a text known as the Guidelines,

or the Move Bible. This was John Africa's opus. John Africa's Guidelines have been seen by few outside the family, but I've read parts of them, and to be honest, they're belaboured, ponderous, unwieldy, even incoherent at times. For me, in the same way philosophers like Michel Foucault or Frantz

Fanon might be. But they're also pretty compelling. He writes about mental health, vitality, relationships, politics, philosophy. It's somewhere between a traditional religious text, self-help, and political manifesto. Things like, since these politicians don't see nothing wrong with compromise, let them compromise 20 of that 40 pounds of steak that got stored away in their deep freeze to a few of their poor and hungry supporters. Let them compromise one of those cars to those crippled, legless veterans of war these politicians are to blame for. And it made a lot of sense to a lot of people, including John Africa's older sister, Louise Sims. I am the type of person who has always looked for something that would help me to find justice. I was constantly seeking out people to follow. I followed and supported the Panther Party. I followed Angela Davis. I mean, I was just

mesmerized by that woman. And as I continued to see nothing working in this political system for me, I continued to search. When I came across the teaching of John Africa, my search ended. In 1972, John Africa meets a young graduate student named Donald Glassie. John Glassie, he wasn't part of that world. Glassie is this young white guy studying sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, and he's completely taken by John Africa. You know, he saw somebody that intrigued him, who became a friend, and he adopted parts of his belief system because it was so compelling and he was around it and it was, you know, all of that. So the two became friends, but this was also a transaction. I mean, where better to spread your gospel than a classroom?

Within the year, Glassie starts teaching John Africa's guidelines to students at a local community college as part of a sociology course. And they're taking to it. MoAfrica would become one of MOVE's earliest members. I had never heard anything like this before. It was really, you know, like very interesting. So I wanted to hear more. And, you know, so I kept coming to, you know, those sessions down at community college.

And it was so clear and so precise about what life should be and where this system is going and where we're headed as long as we continue to promote this system. After a time, it wasn't just students showing up. Like, for instance, me, I was from the Black Muslims. There was cops from the police force. There was people from some other kind of professional place. There was just people that was just from the ghetto that was just poor and looking for a better answer. Yeah.

and looking for a better answer. Yeah. Now, it's true that Don Glassie introduces these ideas to a college, but in the media, he's been incorrectly credited with co-founding MOVE alongside John Africa. I think people wanted to place him there because they didn't want to give credit to the writing of those guidelines to a Black man, a poor Black uneducated person. Now, Don Glassie is an

important character in this story, but not as a white savior. That much will become clear later in the series. The exact moment MOVE becomes an official organization is unclear. I don't think they were thinking of it as a movement at first. He was just trying to encourage people to be right. And it evolved into, I'm going to start an organization. For a while, it was called the Christian Movement for Life. But by 1972, they're known simply as MOVE. Of its meaning, John Africa said, quote,

The word MOVE is not an acronym. It means exactly what it says. Move. Work. Generate. Be active. Everything that's alive moves. If it didn't, it would be stagnant, dead. Movement is the principle of life. And because MOVE's belief is life, our name is MOVE. When we greet each other, we'll say, On a MOVE. And like the guidelines, MOVE is this incredibly amorphous organization. They weren't quite black nationalists, not environmentalists, not anarchists, or abolitionists, or militants.

Not in the conventional sense, at least. So people really didn't know how to categorize them. There were some familiar elements. Like Dr. King, they opted to include white people in their movement. And like the hippies of the day, there was a bit of a flower power vibe to them. The militancy of the black power era was also present in MOVE's founding beliefs. If you punch me in the face, I got a fist too, and I'm gonna use it. If you got a club, you coming at me with a club and I got a baseball bat, we gonna be some club swinging motherfuckers. If you got a gun and I got one too,

you better hope you got more bullets and a better shot than I am. But there are also principles that set them apart from other black liberation organizations entirely. It's about life. It's about making a change for the better, to protection for life itself. So those groups were people power groups. They were all about the advancement for people.

Whereas MOVE was total revolution type. Because MOVE is about freedom for people too. MOVE is about prison abolition too. Anti-police, not in a violent way, but you know, you don't need them when everything is cool. But we're also against Barnum and Bailey Ringling Brothers Circus. We're also against the Philadelphia Zoo. We're also against the atomic plant on the river. We're also against the Keystone Pipeline. You know what I'm saying? So that's the difference.

By the end of the year, MOVE is a philosophical movement. John Africa now has his disciples. All that's left now is to put the philosophy into action. MOVE has now settled into a house in a neighborhood of West Philadelphia called Powelton Village. It's a community of artists, students, activists, and hippies. It's owned by that white academic, Donald Glassie. This is Move's first official headquarters. All members of Move have adopted the same surname, Africa, and the same age of one year old to symbolize

a rebirth. They view themselves as a family, an activist organization, and a religion. They raise money through odd jobs like a car wash and a watermelon stand, or general carpentry work. And in the Powelton home, they live according to the tenets set out in John Africa's guidelines. They have their own culture, and it's determined by John Africa, who's a living human being who is incognito. And this is John Africa's group, but he's already begun to fade from public view. He's also become more than just a group's conventional founder. See, John Africa was a healer, and he understood natural foods.

A lot of his time was spent barefoot, so he'd walk on the ground and he'd look at plants and he'd point to the ground and say, dig right there, and you'd dig and there'd be some food there for you. He would tell people, eat this, and this will help with this, and you know. By now, there's a belief among the MOVE family that John Africa and his teachings could remedy sickness and infirmity, ranging from cancer to infertility.

My mom, like, had a medical procedure done when she was, like, 15 or 16 and it messed her up and she could not have babies anymore. And he told them to try these different methods, eating a certain way, doing certain specific exercises, and getting their bodies on the move. And when they did that,

one person had three or four babies after that, and my mom had two. This is some of the gospel MOVE members are spreading outside their headquarters when they speak about John Africa, who they're now calling the coordinator. The guidelines weren't just a static set of ideas. They were about a new way of engaging with the world, a new way of presenting oneself. In the 1970s, Black politics had a certain aesthetic. Think military boots, berets, trench coats, and big hair. The afro. Here's Black Panther Communications Secretary Kathleen Cleaver speaking with a journalist.

This brother here, myself, all of us, we're born with our hair like this, and we just wear it like this because it's natural, because the reason for it, you might say, is like a new awareness among black people that their own natural appearance, its physical appearance is beautiful and it's pleasing to them. For so many, many years, we were told that only white people were beautiful. Only straight hair, light eyes, light skin was beautiful. It all represented a wholesale rejection of Eurocentrism. But for MOVE, the Afro wasn't enough.

So they adopted a symbol of their own. When James Brown had the I'm Black and I'm Proud song, he also had a perm. You know what I'm saying? You have to comb an Afro for it to become an Afro. It ain't natural at all. It's a style. Dreadlocks are not a style. It's just how your hair grows.

You know what I'm saying? Unless you go to the salon and get them put in for $1,500, then maybe it's a style. But dreadlocks are not a style. At the time, freeform dreads were deeply transgressive. For people in the mainstream, they were symbols of perversity, a style reserved for unclean, uncivilized people. Move's embrace of the hairstyle was a rejection of that racist idea and an embrace of natural black beauty in its rawest form.

Part of what drove public opinion of Move was just how unconventional the group was. And this was intentional on the part of John Africa. Move was designed to reject any conventional framing. They positioned themselves as fundamentally different from every other activist movement in America. These people are so anti-system, they want to take you away from the modern world and take you pre-fire. Fuck the system. The whole thing. We ain't even going

to have a refrigerator. You got a stove in this house? What the fuck is that for? We eat our food raw. Unlike other organizations of the day, they were entirely uninterested in popularity or coalition building. Neither did they care about national healing or reconciliation or communion. They believed in revolution. Move are seditionists. To them, freedom doesn't mean running from the plantation to spare yourself. It means burning the master's house down

to the ground behind you. Vincent Leapheart grew up in the shadow of the Philadelphia Zoo. It's a place that kept him awake, tormented by the cries of caged animals. We will be demonstrating at the zoo because of the imprisonment of animals, the imprisonment of life. Here's Mo Africa again. The imprisonment of life. Here's Mo Africa again.

We've seen the imprisonment of animals no different than the imprisonment of people. No different than the imprisonment of a plant or a blade of grass. John Africa, you know, explained to us that all life have feelings and all life want to be free. Don't no life want to be jailed, imprisoned, or stifled. But it wasn't just the zoo. MOVE had identified virtually all of American society for criticism. This included liberals, conservatives, socialists, communists. They hurled invective at a group of high school students calling for President Nixon's impeachment.

They disrupted gatherings of other religions and civil rights groups. Buddhists, Quakers, Black nationalists like the Nation of Islam. Even Jane Fonda. Completely disrupted a meeting. And Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden walked out and I walked out. And most of us walked out. I mean, Hanoi Jane? John Africa felt that all of those people

were still working for the system. It doesn't matter how you present it. You're still talking about supporting and holding hands with the system. So what the fuck difference does it make if it comes in a package of Jane Fonda make if it comes in a package of Jane Fonda or if it comes in a package of Richard Nixon? If it was wrong, then it was wrong.

MOVE are now in the sights of local law enforcement, the media, and the public. They're sort of a local nuisance. But they're about to have a real coming-out party. Thank you. A real coming out party. By the mid-70s, a man named Mike Douglas hosts the biggest TV talk show in the city. He's Philly's very own Johnny Carson. Welcome to the Mike Douglas Show. This is Jan Pierce.

And now, here's Mike. It featured the likes of John Lennon, Muhammad Ali, and Princess Grace of Monaco. On September 4th, 1974, one of the guests is a monkey. They brought a monkey in to be a part of this show, you know, displayed in like some kind of spectacle. And the monkey was uncomfortable with the lights and the whole stage set up and all of that. And he started kind of like, you know, going crazy. He started running through the offices and running through the through the set and everything. And they caught the monkey and then they handcuffed him to a chair.

And he was like flipping out. The monkey was going crazy and everything. And John Africa saw it and he was very offended by it. He was very disturbed by it. For John Africa and Move, it was a form of animal torture. And torture, well, it demands a response. And a few Move members, you know, went to the taping of the show, and they handcuffed the host to the chair. They handcuffed him.

So here they are, a collection of dreadlocked Black revolutionaries sloganeering about the system and the sanctity of all life on primetime television. It's incredible theater. And then they began to put out information about how fucked up it is to handcuff that monkey and how the same feeling that the host is feeling right now is the same thing the monkey felt. It was fucked up. So they wanted to set that example. That's not how you treat people. That's not how you treat life. We spent months searching for the dramatic tape of MOVE's daytime television raid. We poured through local media reports from the 1970s,

looking for some measure of corroboration. I could hardly believe this all happened. It felt like urban legend. And then we happened upon some reporting from the Philadelphia Daily News. The headline of the story was a piece of racist innuendo fitting for the time. It reads, quote, a monkey's uncle. Reporter Tom Fox describes this scene as follows. First, Conrad Africa, dressed in head-to-toe denim, he emerges from one side of the stage while Eddie Africa emerges from the other. Don Africa runs down the middle aisle of the audience, past Delbert Africa, who then appears on the stage,

delivering a speech as two other members of MOVE force Mike Douglas into cuffs. Tom Fox writes, quote, The audience let out a gasp. The surprise raid was on. The MOVE cult, that great interracial family of social revolutionaries, had struck again. The story is also accompanied by a single image. In it, a MOVE member stands looming over a handcuffed Mike Douglas. The MOVE member looks to be lecturing him, like a parent might a child, while others stand on in disbelief in the background. him, like a parent might a child, while others stand on in disbelief in the background.

Move's performance on the Mike Douglas show would get a lot of people talking, and would place them squarely in the crosshairs of the most powerful man in the city. Move is nothing special. They've gotten away with it because we're compassionate and we don't want to hurt innocent people, particularly the children in their own family and their women. Philly's former top cop, America's mayor, Frank Rizzo. I remember at Osage Avenue, the adults would be watching the news, right? And there'll be something that comes up about MOVE or something that comes up about Frank Rizzo.

And the minute that somebody said he's lying, the chant started. And we, you know, in circles, all of us, naked ass hanging out, marching in a circle, arms going back and forth. Hey, Rizzo, you liar, go set your ass on fire. I just remember him being like the main enemy. Like he was the major enemy of Move. He was the major enemy of MOVE. He was the major enemy of Black people. He was an enemy to the city for people that were victims of his brutality and his police.

That's next time on the Africa's vs. America. Hey Rizzo, you liar. Gonna set your ass on fire. Hey Rizzo, you liar. Gonna set your ass on fire. Hey Rizzo, you liar. Gonna set your ass on fire. You've been listening to the Africa's Versus America. Thank you. And our producer is Alina Ghosh. Sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Cannell is our coordinating producer. Emily Mathieu is our fact checker. Our senior producer is Willow Smith.

Consulting producers for Confluential are Tommy Oliver and Keith Gionette. Audio courtesy of Atomola Ecolona and WPVI Channel 6 Philadelphia. Hezakia News. WMAQ TV Channel 5 in Chicago, the Pennsylvania Public Television Network, and The Orchard Entertainment. Book research courtesy of John Africa, Childhood Untold Until Today by Louise Leapart James, and 50 Years on a Move, the History of the Philadelphia-Based Move Organization by Dubside and Mike Africa Jr. Executive producers for CBC Podcasts

are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. RF Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. If you like this show, check out another series from CBC. One of my favorites is Hunting Warhead. It follows journalists and police on a global mission to rescue child abuse victims. And it's hosted by one of the producers on this series, Damon Fairless. In Hunting Warhead, he tracks down survivors and criminals and helps expose the darkest corners of the internet.

It's an excellent listen. Well worth your time. It's an excellent listen, well worth your time You can find it along with all other CBC podcasts on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts Thanks for listening Tune in next week for an all-new episode of the Africans vs. America or you can binge the whole series by subscribing to our channel on Apple Podcasts

Just click on the link in the show description.