Uncover - S20 "The Africas VS. America" E6: Hellfire

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

In 1983, the City of Philadelphia elects its first Black mayor as successor to Frank Rizzo. Woodrow Wilson Goode inherits Rizzo’s fight against MOVE, but he also represents a moment of hope for Black Philadelphians who believe his election could be a harbinger of progress for a city beset with racial strife. Instead, Mayor Goode’s administration unleashes a torrent of violence never before seen in American history in an effort to neutralize MOVE once and for all.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. He is the one. Barack Obama! I was 13 years old when Barack Obama was first elected President of the United States. I remember so clearly the way my middle school shut down so we could all pack into the school's small library to watch his inauguration on a rickety projector. My mother brought the front page of the Toronto Star back to our one-bedroom apartment as a keepsake. Look at him, she would say. This is the future.

In big, bold lettering, the front page read, A dream fulfilled. A man that looked like me, with whom I shared so much of my face, my hair, our protruding ears, an East African heritage, and even a love of basketball. President of the United States. I could hardly believe it. It's absurd thinking about it now.

I'm Canadian, and the American president has little dominion over my daily life. But that was my earliest memory feeling genuinely represented by a politician. It corroborated some deep corner of my existence. It helped to quiet the thing I now understand as imposter syndrome. I remember feeling like maybe now the police wouldn't be so intrusive. Maybe my immigrant parents might finally be accorded the respect their deep intelligence deserved. Maybe my family back home might now be allowed on a plane to the West. I was 13 and so deeply naive.

I remember being inundated by the idea that a Black bureaucracy would save us, would save me. That Black electeds, Black police chiefs, Black police officers and judges and principals and executives would be the ones to lead us out of disenfranchisement. and principals and executives would be the ones to lead us out of disenfranchisement. But as I grew up, something shifted. What is the point of representation if our black leaders operate in a fashion not dissimilar to their white counterparts? What is the point in them being there to begin with? Are we electing changemakers or figureheads? Now, Barack Obama is just one example of the kind of charming, unobtrusive man we are told will lead us into fruitful communion with one another. But the question is, at what cost?

To both oneself, but also to those that look like you. What happens to these men that we cover with our dreams? These men who carry history in their feet when it all comes crashing down. What can power do to a black man? Of all the facts and ironies associated with the MOVE story, a detail I've always struggled with is the fact the man responsible for dropping associated with the MOVE story, a detail I've always struggled with is the fact the man responsible for dropping the bomb on MOVE was a black man. A history-making black man. His name was Woodrow Wilson Good. I'm Matthew Amaha, and this is the Africa's Versus America.

Chapter 6. Hellfire. Now, at the time that you had this conversation, you were aware there were still children in the house, were you not? That's correct. You were aware that there was a possibility there might be explosives in the house, is that correct? That's correct. And you were aware that there was a possibility that they might have been storing gasoline on the roof, is that correct? That's correct.

This is Wilson Good in October 1985. He's testifying before a commission investigating the bombing of the move home on Osage Avenue on May 13th of that same year. 11 people were killed, five of them children. Wilson Good was the first African-American mayor in Philadelphia's long history. He was a rising star in local politics and seemed destined for the national spotlight. How all of that promise so quickly came crashing down is something I wanted to better understand. Good doesn't do much talking. For 37 years, he has said very little publicly about the bombing.

But I reached out anyway, a number of times. And I had all but given up on the prospect of an interview. But then, he called. I do not agree that it was a bombing. I agree that what the police attempted to do, which I did not approve. And Wilson Good had a lot to say. And that the damage that was caused was caused by a decision made by the fire commissioner and the police commissioner to let the fire burn. Yeah, and so we will get into all of that in detail.

Would it be possible to begin in the earlier portions of your life? I was born in 1938, which means I'm 84 years of age now. And I was born into a sharecropping family, a family of nine. into a sharecropping family, a family of nine. Wilson Good's early life in North Carolina was governed by Jim Crow, from where he could eat and shop to where he was able to use the bathroom. In 1954, Good's dad got into an altercation with the landlord, and for fear of his safety, the family fled north. They landed in Philadelphia the same year as the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that would desegregate schools. Good was 16 years old

and brimming over with ambition. Though that isn't to mean there weren't those trying to strip him of it. My counselor, who was white, she told me, don't even think about going to college. But Good did go to college, where he was an active participant in civil rights activity on campus. Once out of school, Good goes on to work in the state's Public Utilities Commission. Then, in 1979, Philadelphia votes Frank Rizzo out of the mayor's office and votes in a man named William Green. And Green gives Good his next job. I was appointed as the first African-American managing director for the city. And it's at this point that Wilson Good first comes into contact with MOVE. And I must have met with people from the MOVE organization

over a period of two or three years, starting in 1980. They were in my office probably once a week. They see a potential ally in the young Black bureaucrat, who they hope might be able to help them with housing, with child welfare, and getting the Move 9 out of prison. I was genuinely trying to help them, and they never actually understood. I could not help them with getting their people out of jail, who had been sent to jail by the district attorney, Ed Rendell. Ed Rendell was Philadelphia's district attorney.

He oversaw a number of cases involving MOVE members. I talked to Ed Rendell and said, these people want to meet with you and talk with you about ways to get the people out of jail. And he said that nothing I'm going to do and nothing that you can do, just stay out of it. That's what he said to me. Did you have any opinion about whether or not they were actually guilty of the crime

for which they had been convicted? I was on the side that they were not guilty of the crime. I was on the side that said that they were mistreated. I was on the side that said that Frank Rizzo just went there and bullied the people and tore the house down and made the people homeless. So I was on the side of the moved people. And that's why when I became managing director and it came to me, I did not say, go away. I said, I do what I can to help you.

As the years roll on, this dialogue between move and good continues. And then in 1983, Good announces plans to launch a formal bid for mayor, and he'll be running against Frank Rizzo. And everybody thought that I did not stand a chance. But the city was changing. Philadelphia was now nearly 40% Black. And as a Black man, Wilson Good, at least nominally, was able to tap into a cultural milieu that Frank Rizzo couldn't. He understood issues like white flight, gentrification, and police brutality.

The kinds of things that MOVE was focused on. Wilson Good won with a tidal wave of Black votes, but it was a biracial victory. White voters who couldn't be convinced that the new Rizzo was anything different than the old Rizzo. And I went on to beat him in the election 58 percentage point to 41 percentage point in 1983. So that's a brief history of how I got to be mayor. Wilson Good is being modest here. His election was groundbreaking.

I have had your mayorship, particularly the early days, described to me a number of ways as the amalgamation of all of the hope and energy that so many Black folks had in Philadelphia, that one day they would be properly represented in the city's government, that yours was a kind of crowning moment for them. I had one person describe it to me as a kind of Obama moment. Did you have the sense of history or the sense of history that your being there represented while all of this was happening? Absolutely. Very much aware of the historic nature of what I was doing.

And very, very serious about the obligation that I had to represent the city in a way that I could as the first African American in that job. Are you entering your time as mayor as a kind of hopeful man in terms of prospects for change, particularly around civil rights? I was absolutely filled with hope, yes. I believed that I could do some things differently in the city that had never been done before. And I felt very strongly that that was a hope, especially for an African-American community who had not seen a person of color rise to that level before. And I felt that I represented them in a special way and never wanted to disappoint them. Wilson Good was part of a much broader movement sweeping across the country,

a kind of golden era of Black political representation. There's Harold Washington in Chicago. Marion Barry had just been re-elected mayor in the nation's capital. And Kurt Schmoke and David Dinkins were soon to be elected mayor in Baltimore and New York City, respectively. Do you think that Black elected leaders take on these leadership roles with the additional responsibility or duty of care towards Black people? I emphasize that I will be the mayor of all the people of the city and that I would seek equality for all the people of the city, because I believe that the best way to help black folk was to make sure that they had equal treatment. So he wasn't the mayor of black Philadelphia. He was the mayor of Philadelphia. By the time he's sworn in in January of 1984, tensions between MOVE and neighbors in the new community of Cobbs Creek are running high.

MOVE have met with officials and have made their case to the press, but it's yielded little success. So they've taken their campaign to the street, where their tactics have become increasingly confrontational. Here's then-Councilman Lucian Blackwell testifying before the commission in 1985. We found that people were complaining about being beaten up, that people were complaining about the move,

members causing some person to have heart attacks, that the children were under a lot of stress, that they were receiving medical treatment, that no one was allowed to go through the streets. So that was an indication that things had changed. By now, the organization had moved from Powelton Village to Osage Avenue. And Osage was completely unlike Powelton. This wasn't a community of activists and hippies. It was the epicenter of the city's black upper-middle class,

home to bureaucrats and church-going grandmothers, the kind of folks who weren't so amenable to MOVE's pressure tactics. And MOVE's neighbors? They go to Wilson Good for help, too. Hopeful the mayor that they elected might be willing to mediate. But as this neighbor tells Frontline, they felt as though Wilson Good had forgotten the constituency that had put him in office to begin with.

Is this the penalty for being black in this country? I mean, is Mayor Good, does he forget that he was once a black person too? Did he forget what the struggle about freedom is all about? I don't know where he lost his roots, but I tell you one thing, he better go back and get them. The houses in Powhatan Village,

basically, you know, you walk up the steps, you're on the porch, you're at the door. This is Andino Ward. I knock on the door, this guy comes out, and I didn't know it was John Africa at that point. I had not seen him before. And I introduced myself, and I'm, you know, saying... In the early 1970s, back when Move was still in Powhatan Village, Andino was married to a woman named Rhonda, and the two of them had a toddler, Ole Wolf.

When Andino and Rhonda split, they remained friendly, and Andino often showed up at Rhonda's to spend time with their son. And one day I went to get him, and her mother tells me that she's in MOVE. And I'm like, really? Which is how he ends up on the doorstep of Move's home in Powelton Village face to face with John Africa. And I'm, you know, saying to him that I'd like to see my wife, my son

and he's like giving me all this ridiculously crazy Move ideology that she's not my wife anymore and he's not my son they're now move and on and on and on and about 30 minutes of this conversation takes place and finally you know i kind of like lost it and i just jumped on the cat you know because i'm asking a simple thing and you're trying to play me you know i'm I'm being fulfilling. I mean, you don't play people. So I jumped on him. And I mean, you know, we're like tussling.

And all of a sudden, I happened to look up. And these two cats are coming out. And I don't know who they were. But one of them had a hatchet. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this is about to get really intense. And I'm probably going to die. And the only thing I remember was I saw the banister that's the porch, and I flipped over it. I just did a backflip, and I landed on my feet.

I don't even know how I landed on my feet, and I took off running. And that was my first encounter with them. And from there, it was just downhill. It was completely downhill. Andino is a character. We meet at his home just outside of Philadelphia, and he's got these ever-present sunglasses, a long white goatee, graying dreads that fall just below the waist.

And he's got on tons of Africa-oriented jewelry. There's an Ethiopian incense, a smell I remember from childhood, burning just in the corner of the room as we speak. Andino is a record producer and musician. He's toured with Sun Ra and worked with the likes of the Isley Brothers, Funkadelic, Rick James and Bette Davis. He tells me at one point he lived with Bob Marley for six months in Kingston, Jamaica. Andino says he understands the appeal the

MOVE organization carried for Rhonda. It was the fact that they provided basically something that she had never had, which was family. Andino makes one more unsuccessful attempt to see his son at the Powelton home, and then he changes tact. He hopes that by filing for divorce, he may be able to see his son at the Powelton home, and then he changes tact. He hopes that by filing for divorce, he may be able to see Ole Wolf again. But he says no lawyer was willing to serve papers to move. I just kind of like got to the point where I thought, I have no recourse here. There is just no one that is going to help me. And no one wants to touch this. I'm going to have to wait. And hopefully he grows up

at some point and he'll want to know and he'll come to me. So Andino joins the Air Force and heads off to Europe. But following the shootout in Powhatan Village in 1978, he's given leave to go find his son. And that's when he encounters George Fensel, the head of the Philadelphia Police Department's Civil Disobedience Unit, the CDU. Rizzo was just an in-your-face cat. Fensel was kind of like, you know, the back door.

It's like, yes, I'm stabbing you, but I'm standing in front of you basically smiling at the same time. On his return to Philadelphia, Andino asked for a meeting with the district attorney. He was still struggling in his search for his child, but the DA didn't come alone. All these other folks that I never recognized or knew, but they were in the room, Fensel was one of them. And Fensel was kind of like to be,

I guess you could say for lack of a better word, my handler. This guy was the guy that I was supposed to communicate with in terms of finding my son. So he would call me, say, listen, I'm going to pick you up. We need to go here. We need to go there. I'd like to talk with you about this. I mean, he even came with this thing of getting me a gas company uniform and having me go knock on the door of the move, you know,

I'm like, what is it with this guy? So are they basically trying to groom you into being an informant for the Philadelphia police department? Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty much where they were taking me, you know,

and they used to take me to a lot of these, I guess you could say command posts or operation centers. This guy was like, yeah, you know, we're trying to have you, you know, really get your son and we want to really help you do that. But at the same time, he comes off

like, but can you tell me who that is? Andino says Fensel is pointing to photographs on the wall like every melodramatic crime drama you've ever watched. Bits of string connecting one person to the next. And I'm like thinking to myself, well, wait a minute, hold up. I'm trying to get my son, but now you're trying to get me to tell you who these people are that I don't even know.

And just as Andino's beginning to have his doubts, Fensel suggests that his son may be at Move's sister chapter in Virginia, Seeds of Wisdom. This is the 96-acre farm largely occupied by MOVE women and children. Now what they didn't know is I had already been to the Seeds of Wisdom. I had purchased a van, I had purchased some surveillance equipment, and I had already gone down and I had pictures and everything of the circumstances there. But at that point, I still could not tell that my son was there because I didn't know what he looked like. And Fensel said to me, we will provide you with whatever weaponry you need. I mean, I could have like blown up, I could have done anything, but I'm like,

I cannot once again, let these cats see that I'm shook by what they're saying. And I just looked at them, you know, and I just thought to myself, you know, this is where this has culminated at. These folks have never been trying to help me. They've been trying to string me along to, you know, try and see if they could get me to, you know, fulfill the situation that they wanted. And I kind of just looked at them and I said, you know, give me a few days to think about this and I'll get back to you. And I never came back. to think about this and I'll get back to you. And I never came back again.

MOVE had enjoyed support in the Black community through the years, largely from the kind of folks who deeply resonated with their resistance to police brutality, or those who considered the MOVE 9 to have been unjustly persecuted. But as MOVE's tactics grew more hostile in the street, they became increasingly isolated and polarizing, even among the kinds of black people who held many of their same convictions. To Andino, MOVE had become radioactive.

They're running around now saying that they're revolutionaries. And I'm going to dispel that myth completely, because we know what revolutionaries are. You look at the Panthers. Yeah, they were revolutionaries. But what made them a revolutionary? It's what they did. They tried to do something that was beneficial to their community. The breakfast program, the educational program, They did things to try and help. MOVE never did anything. If you look at the history of MOVE, there's nothing they did. But they really were unable to understand that

everything that they were trying to invoke was madness. It had no direction. It had no focus. I understand Indino's frustration here. The move issue was a deeply personal one for him. But that isn't to say there weren't others who thought as he did. Even Bobby Seale, a founder of the Black Panther Party, would publicly disavow move, saying, quote, You don't alienate the people, particularly the people around you in the community.

A revolutionary group must have goals, objectives, and MOVE does not. There was a particular incident when MOVE presided over a 36-hour public haranguing of its neighbors via a bullhorn propped up on the roof of their home. It was early Christmas morning. We were in, making Santa Claus with the kids. We heard this loud noise. At first, I thought it was like someone playing Christmas cows. So we went to the door. It was this loud speaker,

this cousin from the Mood house, saying about they wanted their sisters and brothers out of jail. Moove believed that if they were confrontational enough, it might compel their Black community to stand with them in demanding the Moove 9 be released from prison. It was, in their eyes,

a last-ditch appeal for solidarity. But it wasn't just the bullhorn. At first, the things I complained about, which I complained directly to them, was, like, trash and garbage. And at first, they were cooperative. They would say, OK, and they would move things. Time went on, and conditions just were continually worse.

Then we had to contend with things inside our house. The bugs took over our house, you know. We exterminated all the time, and it did no good. My children woke up in the middle of the night from bug bites, crying from things biting them in their beds. Some might say MOVE was operating on false hope. That no matter the fact Wilson Good agreed on the MOVE 9's innocence, the state of Pennsylvania was never going to release them simply because the group demanded it. But there was some precedent here to suggest

otherwise. Like when the city released MOVE people following the 14-month blockade outside their home in Powelton Village. In their eyes, the city and state had acquiesced before. So why not again? It was just, this time. They invoked so much angst in their own community. They destroyed it. They forced Black folks to do the one thing they don't want to do, ever. Call the cops. all the caps. When we had a meeting with the mayor, I know right then in my heart, I know there wasn't nothing he was going to do for us. Because he said to us, why can't you all deal with it? It's black on black.

He didn't want to deal with us at all. Just like we was a bunch of bombs sitting there and he was talking to a bunch of bombs. We waste his time next Sunday morning. I put this complaint from a neighbor speaking with Frontline to good. Does that kind of characterization at all align with your memory of those conversations with those neighbors at that time?

It does not. It does not at all. And there's no one who ever worked for me who ever would have said anything like that. They met with me probably a dozen times. And I said to them that if you have a complaint, file a complaint, file a noise complaint, file an harassment complaint,

but I cannot simply, based upon you just coming and talking to me, do something about the problem. That never happened. Therefore, I could not, at that point, in my view, do anything other than to ask the police department and the other people to go and meet with the Moog family and see whether or not they could negotiate things. Is there a sense that they may have gone directly to you because they expected a level of solidarity with you having been Black? I don't know, but I referred them to who I felt could help them. By this point, some in the neighborhood are pleading with the city to call the cavalry in,

even if it meant people inside the move home would die. As far as good is concerned, the city's best hope for bringing the standoff to an end is through the courts. The city's best hope for bringing the standoff to an end is through the courts. If they can serve arrest warrants, gather the children, and put them under the legal custody of the state for 72 hours, the city would have time to further strategize a way out. It was Ed Rendell's job to sign off on the arrest warrants. They came to me, and they wanted authority for a search warrant and an arrest warrant.

The arrest warrant was for minor charges. We signed off on that easily. And there was enough evidence to establish probable cause to justify a search warrant, and I signed it, but I was struck. But it wasn't just the police that Rendell was sending to Osage. We sent the Department of Public Welfare social workers out there to say, look, if we're going to go through a siege, let the department take the kids. They'll put them just temporarily in a foster home. They'll be out of danger, et cetera.

Wouldn't think of it. In fact, they were using, in my judgment, they were using the kids as sort of a shield. They thought that there'd never be a strong attempt to take them out as long as the kids were in the house. I think that if I made any mistake in this whole situation, it was my appointment, Gregor Sambor as police commissioner. Gregor Sambor joined Frank Rizzo's police department after a couple of stints with the military. And when Goode appointed him commissioner, he inherited the department that Rizzo had built, both structurally and culturally. But I'd been told by a number of

people that even Frank Rizzo, known to appreciate a good fight, saw Sambor as something of a liability and sidelined him as a result. As one source put it, Sambor had seen active duty in both Korea and Vietnam, and he was hungry for his next war. But as Frank Rizzo's time in office gave way to Wilson Good, Sambor found his way into the seat of power. He should never have been police commissioner,

and he did not have, in my view, the sensitivity and the ability to deal with complicated issues like this. And I felt kind of secure in not removing him quickly because I had a manager and director, Leo Brooks Sr., who was a major general and who I did have confidence in, who was his immediate supervisor. Leo Brooks was a close ally of Goods and an appointee of his.

In his city manager, Wilson Goods' old job, Brooks was a close ally of Goods and an appointee of his. And as city manager, Wilson Goods' old job, Brooks was a younger Black bureaucrat in the image of his predecessor. And it would be his job to oversee the operation on Osage from the ground. And I thought that he would be able to deal with the situations out there at that time if anything did not go according to plan. And so what exactly was the initial plan, as you understand it? Simply make the arrests and ask the people to come out of the house. And if they did not come out, then we would just wait them out.

They had to leave the house at some point at some time. If they could not do that and it came towards nightfall, that they would go into the joining house and that they would put a hole through the wall in the basement and force them out by pumping tear gas into the house. Good says he had a few conditions as well. The first condition was make sure all the children should be removed from the house, not be in the house when this takes place,

and that the children would be picked up as they went to the park and put into services. And it was my belief that morning that there were no children in the house. The second thing I said was that no one who was part of the 1978 confrontation would move would be on that site on that day. And the third thing is there would be no firing, no weapons used in order to bring about this change, unless you're powered upon. Those are my three conditions, and none of them happened.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground 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. 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. I had invited some elected officials that represent that district over to my home so that we could be together and just talk. Good is up early the morning of May 13th. He says he's surprised when he learns just how many police officers and firefighters are on the scene at Osage. Hundreds of them. There, he's still believed to serve warrants to four members of MOVE. MOVE's founder, John Africa, isn't one of the four.

But by chance, he is in the house that day. But Good says he still expects a quick and bloodless operation to unfold. And then he hears gunfire in the distance. But when Good was asked about this moment during the commission, he says he believed what he was hearing to be stun guns. Yes, stun guns. Who did you think they were firing stun guns at? These people were barricaded inside the house. As I understand a stun gun, it's something with an electric charge or something like that that's aimed at a person and hits the person and stops the person without permanently injuring them. My understanding from the discussion

with the commissioner was that it would be fired against the house that would immobilize those persons inside the house on a temporary basis. But when I asked him about it, 37 years later. So I called the manager and director and said there was not supposed to be any gunshots. And he said to me, they're shooting over the house. I said, well, as long as they're not shooting in the house and they're going over the house, I guess that's all right. And the next thing I knew was reading in the newspaper that there were 10,000 rounds shot into the house that day. And that was totally contrary to anything I ever understood would happen, anything I ever approved happening. Okay, so essentially what I'm being told here is that you were not aware that they were firing into the home until the next day.

I was not aware that they fired into the house until either the evening news or the next morning. What did you personally think was going to happen that day? What I saw happening that day was that the police would go out. We have warned for the arrest of A and B that they would come out of the house and would be arrested. Under other circumstances, I felt that they would refuse to come out and then someone would talk to me and say, now what do we do at this point? No one ever talked to me and asked that question during that day. As the city's managing director,

Leo Brooks is Good's man on the scene on Osage. And he tells the mayor to stay away, that it isn't safe. So Good heads to City Hall. We were told by both members of MOVE and journalists that were on the scene that day that MOVE were working on the scene. They had folks just outside of the house, specifically men named Jerry Africa, that was working to get in touch with you as all of this was happening, to be able to negotiate something. Jerry Africa is outside the home scrambling to try to specifically get you on the phone and that he was able to get

other city officials on the line, but MOVE only ever wanted to negotiate directly with you. But over the course of that day, they were not able to get you on the phone. I can tell you that that's the first time

I've ever heard that. And everyone knows I was the most reachable and most accessible mayor that's been in the city. And if someone had told me that they wanted to negotiate with me, I would have gone to the scene myself. I never got a message from anyone. Where were you when the bomb was actually dropped on the home? Where were you when the bomb was actually dropped on the home? I don't use the term bomb.

That was an advice drop to remove a bunker from the house. Commissioner Sambor had focused on the bunker on the roof of the house on Osage for fear that it could provide MOVE some tactical advantage, offering them an elevated position from which to shoot incoming police. Okay, so to you, there's a distinction between an incendiary device being dropped from a helicopter over top of the home where they knew people to be in and the use of the word bomb. Well, the distinction is that if explosives are used for purposes of destroying the house, I think that's a bomb. If I'm told by the people who initiated this,

which I did not approve, that they wanted to remove the bunker from the house, I think you could say bomb, but I think that I would see that as a more controlled situation than dropping to blow up the house, for example. Just a reminder, it was a satchel containing C4 explosives, the kind of weapon widely featured in combat that was dropped on the move home. It was a fire that caused the problem, not the device that was dropped.

not the device that was dropped. District Attorney Ed Rendell says there was a detail he couldn't quite shake from the planning stages of the city's operation. I was struck by the fact that they had taken aerial photographs and on the roof of the house, immediately behind the bunker, there were open cans of gasoline. I mean, big gasoline cans, four foot, five foot tall. I thought to myself, there are open cans of gasoline on the roof. Are these guys idiots?

And so, Good is correct. It was the fire sparked by the bomb that, as he puts it, caused the problem. The fire was small at first, but it grew quickly. I was standing in front of my television, in my office, shouting loud, put the fire out, put the fire out. And I was trying to reach Leo Brooks on my phone, and I could not reach him.

So by this point, the home is a raging inferno, and you're not able to get anyone that is on site on the phone at that point? The mayor cannot reach any of, like, nobody is picking up the mayor's call? Leo Brooks did not pick my call up for at least 10 minutes. And so when you're able to get him on the phone after those 10 minutes, what is it that he relays to you? I said, put the fire out. He said, I've been telling them that for the last 10 minutes.

And that's what he relayed to me. That he'd given order to put the fire out. Fire Commissioner William C. Richmond would later testify that Commissioner Sambor asked him if they could control the fire. And my response, and I'm a cautious person by nature, I said, I think we can. He said, let's let the bunker burn. Here's Police Commissioner Sambor. Here's police commissioner Sambor. I did tell him, in essence, in communication, I communicated to him that I would like to let the fire burn.

I mean, the bunker burn. And so by this point, are you aware that there are people inside the home and that there are a number of children inside the home? I'm not aware of who's in the house. I'm especially not aware that there are children in the house because I was told that the children were picked up. Part of why I have some trouble reconciling the city's focus on the children as a pretext for their operation on move comes down to this one detail. In the early hours of May 12th, some of the children in the move home had gone to a local market for food, and by the time they returned, there was now a police perimeter around their neighborhood. Ramona Africa says the police

looked into the vehicle, saw the children, and allowed them back into the move home. children and allowed them back into the move home. So if the mission was to save the move children, why would you allow kids to enter a home that you plan to bomb? I put this to good. This is the first time I've heard what you just said to me. After all these years, the children outside and the police let them back in. That's the first time I've heard that. And I am teary-eyed and I'm also outraged that they would do that and not at least notify me as permission to do that.

The idea of that is unbelievable to me and outrageous and for to have public officials, a police commissioner to think that way and to act that way and strategged that it happened on my watch and that I was not there to do something about it. These were children. These were babies. These were people who deserve to live. And so I think what I'm going to do now is another example of something that has I mean gave me a real moment of pause and frankly something that I have lost sleep over personally not only was a device dropped on the home not only did it begin a fire that would soon take over the entire house and would soon spread to the rest of the street. And not only did the fire department not opt to put the fire out, but that as they tried to escape, there were police snipers positioned in the rear of the home

that were shooting them back into the flames, making it so that they weren't able to escape the inferno. We was going out, then the cops started shooting again. Bertie Africa was the lone surviving child of the bombing. Here he is testifying at the MOVE commission. What did it sound like? It was a like that. Let's try that again just a little bit louder so we can pick it up.

It was a like it was just going after each other, like it was going, books were going after each other. Like it was going, books were going after each other. A decision like that, you know, to have police officers positioned at the rear of the home, shooting at, you know, young children and women trying to escape a fire. That's outrageous. That's absolutely, absolutely outrageous. It's dumb. It's contrary to anything that I would ever stand for. And I would be totally shocked if the managing director knew that and did not tell me.

All I can say is that if that happened, that it is just outrageous. So Good is telling me he's hearing this for the first time, but he's positioned just behind his police commissioner at this press conference three days after the raid. three days after the raid. Fire was returned. As for the fact as to whether or not we killed anybody, that information is not at this present available to me. Sambor is responding to allegations that police shot at MOVE members as they tried to escape the fire through the back alleyway.

But moments later, his story changes. Let me clear one thing up to the question about the firing in the alley. There was no fire returned by the police officers for fear of hitting the child. Bullet fragments would be found in the remains of at least two members of MOVE. One was a child. The other was John Africa. The police commissioner may have been capable of that, but I'm totally shocked that the fire commissioner

would not have spoken out and said something after it was over. And the only thing the fire commissioner said to me before he died, he said, I want you to know that you had a police commissioner who was out of control that day at the scene. One of Good's three conditions was that none of the officers who'd been involved in the siege on the Powelton Village home be present during the operation at Osage Avenue.

But a number of them were, including at least two who were involved in the beating of Delbert Africa. We know Officer Lawrence Dulissy was stationed in the back alley, as was Terence Mulvihill. They all reported to Sambor. And so, as the man that was at the head of this operation, who had very clearly delivered orders to a number of officials, including the managing director of the city and the police commissioner, how would you respond to the accusation for MOVE that they

believe this to have been essentially a way of exterminating the group forever? leave this to have been essentially a way of exterminating the group forever? I believe that they have a right to believe that. And I believe that may have been the intention of the police commissioner. And I believe that it was something that he was capable of doing, not pre, but post. I believe based upon the fact that it did happen and based upon the fact that all of these things happened, that was contrary to any understanding I had with him, I believe that the assessment of MOVE members may be absolutely correct. And I can only blame the police commissioner for that and who I believe persuaded the fire commissioner not to put the fire out. I believe from my own point of view, I believe it's all rest

with a police commissioner who was out of control and maybe angry. I don't know what the story was. what the story was. It is beyond my comprehension that a human being, a police commission, can be on the scene, let the children back in the house, and then permit police officers to shoot into the house, and then permit the fire department to put all that water in the house with those women and children in the house. I just, I just, I really cannot, I'm sorry, I really cannot believe that. Well, the day of the bombing basically was interesting because we had been watching this situation take place leading up to that. And Dino Ward is watching the events of May 13th unfold on his television. It's been almost seven years since he gave up his search for his son. And again, I'm thinking, wow, you know, is he in there?

But there's nobody I can call and ask. Can't call move. Can't call the city. You know, so here I am again. I'm the consummate voyeur watching this thing. And then that Sunday, the bomb is dropped and, you know, everything burns. And you see the pictures of the boy, the only child survivor. And I'll never forget.

And this goes back to my mother, the first time I came back from Europe. Andino had come home from his time in the Air Force sporting a medallion that bore the symbol of the Taurus. But Andino's mother, she saw it as a sign of the devil. Well, she reiterated a passage from the Bible, and I don't remember the exact scripture, but it says,

as I have sustained and secured you I shall sustain and secure your seed And I'll never forget that Because on that Sunday morning When I was watching that Those very same words came in my head As I have secured your life, I shall secure your seed. And within minutes of those words, my father is on the phone. And he's like, listen, are you sitting down? And I'm like, yeah, you know, and he's like, that little boy that you've

been watching is your son. And he told me I needed to get down to Children's Hospital as quickly as possible and that's what I did and they had cops and he was handcuffed so I immediately invoked legal rights and so on and threw the cops out had them handcuff him

and began the process that was in play to really to secure his existence free of all of this. And Dino begins by asking his son if he knows who he is. And surprisingly, he said yes. And I'm like, well, how would he know that? Because I didn't even know this was my son. And so I asked him, how do you know it's me? And he said, because my mother told me about you. She must have known that, you know, the end was near

and that she probably had made a tremendous mistake. One of the things he did tell me was that the final thing that took place in the back of the house, the garage, every time they were trying to come out, the police were shooting, which would drive them back in. But eventually, when the smoke become overwhelming and the fire became overwhelming, she finally just pushed him out. And that was it. Rhonda died in the fire, after saving her son. In so many ways, the story of May 13th has been reduced to a kind of bureaucratic accident. A story of a city government that had simply lost control.

It's a framing that explicitly overlooks the racialized nature of the bombing. But there's one detail in particular that brings the question of racism and white supremacy back into focus. And what did you yell? I was saying, we want to come out. You want to come out? And what did the other children do? Did they do the same thing? Yeah. Were any of the children crying? Yeah.

We all were. You all were crying? And you all were crying saying, we want to come out, we want to come out? And then what happened? Mona went out and then she said, it's all right, we're going to come out now. And then we started rushing out. Bertie escapes the home but falls trying to make his way over a fence. He's lying face down and motionless in a pool of water, three feet deep.

Residue from the fire department's deluge guns. And it's at this point that he's spotted by a police officer named James Burgheier. I remember as soon as I scooped him up, he said to me, don't shoot me, don't shoot me. Burgheier makes the decision to rescue Bertie, though his fellow officers are urging against it. You might think a police department in desperate need of a hero might have rallied around Berghire, but that isn't exactly what happened. Instead, he becomes the target of racist harassment.

Following his testimony at the commission, Berghire has the words nigger lover scrawled across his locker, and within two years, he will retire from the force with PTSD. The first man in the history of the Philadelphia Police Department ever put on disability for post-traumatic stress disorder. All for the crime of saving the life of a young black child. Bertie had survived the raid and the fire, the only child to make it out alive,

but he was still terribly injured. He had been burned over 30% of his body, so I needed to understand the nature of what I'm going to have to deal with in terms of, you know, being able to really care for his injuries. And I remember the first thing that, you know, we tried to do was to cut his nails, but he thing that, you know, we tried to do was to cut his nails, but he did not, you know, want that because Move had this thing about, you know, cutting nails. The second was, you know, cutting of his hair, cutting his dreads and whatever, which I didn't

really want to do. But from the standpoint of the cleanliness aspect and not knowing how they had really treated this, we felt it was better. You know, if you wanted to grow them back, then fine, but we would do it the right way. So we were able to cut his hair and we still have it. It's in a bag. It's packed away somewhere, but yeah, we do have it. And then begins the long road of rehabilitation, both mental and physical. Once we finally got him home, it was four hours a day, two hours at a time. And you're scrubbing these burns and they're raw. And it was horrible just looking at them. And I'll never forget, you know, it was always a situation where I looked at it in the context that I had to be strong. I couldn't just arbitrarily break down, you know, because I

had to get him through this. And I couldn't get him through this if I couldn't get through this. So there were times when I would just say, take a rest, you know, let's take a 10 minute rest just to give him time. And I would leave the bathroom and I would sob like a child in the hallway because I couldn't do it in front of him. My heart was so broken at this. As the months pass, Andino believes it had come time for Bertie to assume a new identity, a new beginning, one of his choosing. His father hands him a Bible, and he ends up in the book of Genesis, stuck on the names of a warrior and a lost child. He took Michael as a first name and Moses as his middle name. Michael then begins his first shot at formalized education.

He didn't even know that a man had landed on the moon. He didn't know his ABCs, one, two, threes, this, that, the other. that a man had landed on the moon. He didn't know his ABCs, one, two, threes, this, that, the other. So I formulated a plan, basically, to try and get him acclimated to some sort of educational prowess. For a long time, meals were a sticking point. Michael wasn't so keen on foregoing the only diet he'd ever known, raw food.

But they did eventually get past that. And Michael? He grows to be, you know, a very productive young man. Move is inherent in his overall movement because he's always contending with the deficit that they placed him in. Deficit meaning educationally, deficit meaning emotionally, because he's very introverted. And I think a lot of that has to do with move and has to do with,

you know, still the lingering thoughts of move and the insecurity, you know, that obviously it invoked in him. But, you know, working with him and trying to help him through it, you know, he was able to get through it, not to the degree that I would have liked. So everything I had to do, I had to do in a very, very condensed amount of time. I didn't get to basically, you know, take him to baseball games. I didn't get to teach him, you know, these other things that you're usually taught as you grow up. Once basically, you know, you get to your teens, you don't listen to your parents as much. You know, your world is more out there. And I didn't have time to prepare him adequately for that world.

As Michael got older, Andinos' move began to fade into the background of their lives. He hated move, did not want to discuss move, and I never really forced that. Because I wanted him to, you know, have a life. And I was hoping that, you know, the more he got into living, the less he would think about that. Michael gets into real estate. He marries. Then in 2013, Michael and his half-siblings plan a family cruise to celebrate Andino and his wife's anniversary. So the last day of the cruise, we were returning to Miami. My wife and I were asleep. Next thing I know, my oldest daughter is like banging on the door. Dad, dad, dad. And I'm like, okay, you know, so I get up and she comes and she's like, something happened to Mike. And I'm like, what? What do you

mean? Something happened to Mike? Wasn't'm like, what? What do you mean? Something happened to Mike? Wasn't he at the bar with you all? And then she explained to me, no, he came, he said he was just going to have a cognac and a cigar in the jacuzzi. And I'm like, what happened? She's like, I don't really know. I just know that something's happened to him and it's him. And so I run down there and at that point they have him out and he's on the ground and they're trying to, you know, apply resuscitation and all the things relative to, you know, I guess bringing him back, but it was too late. Michael Moses Ward drowned. He was 41 years old.

Michael Moses Ward drowned. He was 41 years old. I finally get him back, only to lose him again. Wilson Good blames Frank Rizzo for creating the conditions of a tragedy with Move. He blames Ed Rendell for failing to listen to their pleas regarding the MOVE 9. He blames Commissioner Sambor for grave insubordination on May 13th. Sambor isn't alive to answer to Good's version of events. He died in 2015. And Good, in his own way, has taken responsibility for the bombing. But his version of events is also riddled with a comforting kind of absolution.

A self-portrait of a man that was in over his head and victim to seasoned bureaucrats that used him for their own ends. There's nothing that happened on May 13th that I was directly responsible for. And I'm disappointed that people that I appointed to carry out a job did it so poorly. And I accept responsibility for having appointed them. But I know for sure of one thing. There's nothing that I did, I would have done, that would have led to the, of becoming the first African-American mayor of the city. And so I think about what happened. I grieve about what happened. For you, you know, as a man that has accomplished so much in public life, someone that was a trailblazer in so many ways that cut a path for, you know, folks to come in after you, particularly people that look like you and look like me.

The fact that now, nearly 40 years after the MOVE bombing, so much of your legacy is bound up in the legacy of this operation. It is almost like with every mention of Wilson Good, there's a comma and it says, "'The mayor of Philadelphia that oversaw "'the bombing of the MOVE family.'" And so what I'm wondering is how it feels to have that bombing marked on your legacy

in so many ways. And the fact that it is part of your legacy in a way that it might not be someone like Gregor Sambord. Well, I think that no one from the media, the Philadelphia media, has ever sat down and talked with me like you're talking to me here now. The Philadelphia media has ever sat down and talked with me like you're talking to me here now. And I think that if the truth was known, it would be a different story. And all I'm saying is that it is what it is.

And I've had a blessed life. I live a strong life. I'm proud of what I've accomplished. I grieve for the moved family and children who lost their lives on May 13th, 1985. I will never forget that date. And every time it comes around, I remember. And I become teary-eyed, frankly. And I become teary-eyed as I am now when I talk about it because, and I agree with you that it is something that will forever be a part of my legacy. But I also believe that part of that also is the racism in the media and the fact that they have never talked about

in a way that I feel appropriate the accomplishments which I made. So what is the cost of Black leadership? In Philadelphia in 1985, it meant entering politics and slowly realizing you've been incorporated into a system used to concentrate suffering on people that look like you. The number of mayors that existed during MOVE prior to Wilson Good were all white. And not one of them, not one of them, stepped into this.

And no one did what basically was eventually done. Only Wilson Good did they plan to do this, and they did it. Because they had the first black mayor in, and they figured we'll hang this around his neck. People who know Wilson Good have said to me they've pleaded with him to commit his version

of events to the public record, to accept responsibility, but also clarify the struggle for power that ultimately gave way to the bombing. To make clear, they believed this was a systemic failing as much as it was a personal one, and that if he didn't, others would write his story for him. What I'm left with is the intense tragedy of the move bombing, the hopes of a city and neighborhood who had invested so much of themselves in a man they'd expected to protect them. A family abandoned to die in a raging fire, and a man estranged from his son, now grieving decades lost. I'm left with the fact that even neighbors on Osage Avenue,

those who believed in the police and the state and called them for help, would fall victim to the very forces that they called in by some mordant irony, making them complicated accomplices to the greatest tragedy their city had ever seen. And I'm left with Woodrow Wilson Good, remembered as the first black man to lead the city of Philadelphia as mayor,

but immortalized as the man that bombed a black family and set a black neighborhood to fire. Next time, on the final episode of The Africas vs. America, the Moo family and Mike Africa Jr. of the Africans vs. America. The Moo family and Mike Africa Jr. forge a path forward in the wake of the bombing of their home. And after 40 years, a bittersweet homecoming.

It's been a battle. That's right. It's been a battle. Come on now. Ha ha! On the move, girl. On the move. On the move.

On the move. On the move. Power to the people. That's move. Power to the people. That's right. Power to the people. Power to the people. What's the call? Free the law!

What's the call? Free the law! What's the call? Free the law! Yeah! Long live revolution! Long live revolution! You've been listening to the Africa's vs. America

from CBC Podcasts and Confluential Films. The show is written and produced by me, Matthew Amah, and Jessica Lindsay. Our story editor is Damon Fairless. And our producer is Alina Ghosh. Sound design by Evan Kelly. Emily Connell 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 Giannette. Audio courtesy of the Pennsylvania Public Television Network and Frontline PBS. Additional research thanks to Lynn Washington Jr. Executive producers for CBC Podcasts are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Thanks for listening. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of the Africas 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.