Families of MOVE Bombing Victims Demand Final Return of Loved Ones’ Remains

Growing up, Yvonne Malaika Akosua Orr-El says she and her sister were taught “to understand that our bodies were temples.” 

Decades later, Orr-El is among a number of advocates and family members demanding that the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Museum acknowledge the harm done to her family and the many ways in which her younger sister’s body — even after death — has been treated as anything but sacred. 

Last month, the Penn Museum announced the discovery of additional human remains of victims of the 1985 MOVE bombing while conducting an inventory of the museum’s biological anthropology section. During a standoff with the Black liberation group, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on members’ home in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood on May 13, 1985, killing 11 people and burning down more than 60 homes.

The recently discovered set of remains was identified as Orr-El’s sister, Delisha Africa, who was 12 when she died. At a press conference at City Hall on Monday morning, Orr-El joined other MOVE family members to issue a list of demands from city and Penn officials, including that Delisha’s remains be returned to her family, that reparations be issued to MOVE, and that the bombing’s history be taught in Philadelphia schools.

In 2021, local news outlets revealed that the Penn Museum was storing remains of those murdered in the bombing and that they were used in anthropology courses at Princeton University. As recently as 2021, former Penn museum curator and anthropology professor Janet Monge analyzed the remains of Katricia Dotson, a teenage victim of the bombing, in an online forensic anthropology course previously available on Coursera. 

Orr-El said that Penn provided her with partial remains, which she spent more than $60,000 to analyze “only to discover they were dog remains when I was told it was my sister.” 

“I cannot express properly the anger that I have, so I smile my way through it,” Orr-El said. “You have burned alive and shot back into a burning home 11 men, women and children and did nothing but apologize and put up a plaque. Is that enough if that were your mother? Your daughter? Your father? Your sister?”

Philadelphia Councilmember Jamie Gauthier also spoke at the press conference, saying that news of the newly discovered remains placed her “back in the same position as three years ago” when the remains were first made public. She referred to the long and ongoing timeline of trauma that MOVE members and their families have suffered as a “profound disrespect for Black life and Black death.”

Human remains of MOVE members initially came into Penn’s possession in 1986 when the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office approached forensic anthropologists at the Penn Museum for help identifying bone fragments left at the scene of the bombing. According to a report conducted that year by an independent commission, the office’s handling of the bombing scene was already rife with mismanagement and violations of “generally accepted practices for pathologists.” 

Following the discovery of the MOVE remains, Penn released a public statement that has been regularly updated to reflect new findings as it investigates its bioanthropology inventory. According to the 2021 statement, “All known MOVE remains were returned to the Africa family as soon as we learned they were at the Museum. We apologized to the family and our community for the unethical possession of these remains and committed to a rigorous reassessment of institutional practices.”

A section of the statement outlining reparative steps the museum has been taking in the years since mentions the 2022 appointment of the institution’s first chief diversity officer, an updated release of the its human remains policy, and the appointment of a faculty-curator in anthropology and bioarchaeology with a background in scholarship and advocacy for Black and Indigenous people. 

However, advocates at Monday’s press conference said that Penn’s commitment to “centering human dignity and the wishes of descendant communities” remains an empty promise. Perhaps the most pressing promise that has yet to be fulfilled is the complete return of all identified MOVE remains, they said. 

Mike Africa Jr., the grandnephew of John Africa, a MOVE member who was killed during the bombing, said the museum has yet to return his uncle’s remains.

“In 2021, when the city and Penn said they were going to do all they could to get our family members’ remains back to us, they did turn over some things, but I can tell you that, as the great-nephew of John Africa, when they returned [his] remains, they did not return his head,” Africa said. “We are still being lied to and continuously harmed and outraged by the fact that our family members’ remains still have not been returned to us.” 

Africa also shared that forensic documentation on his uncle’s body found that he was decapitated deliberately by human force, not by the ammunition or fire from the bombing.

In a statement to Prism regarding both Africa and Orr-El’s allegations, a museum spokesperson shared that Penn “has promised the family and our community to investigate reported information about additional MOVE remains at the Museum. In addition to directly communicating any new information with the Africa mothers, the museum has fully cooperated with all investigations and will continue the ongoing inventory work and rigorous provenance research.”

On Monday, Africa and Orr-El both detailed additional demands, including a full review of Penn’s entire anthropology inventory; the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, political prisoner and journalist who has gained widespread notoriety for his writings about the carceral system; investments in a public memorial and the return of the MOVE home on Osage Avenue that was bombed and then seized by the city under eminent domain; and the arrest of Monge and former Penn and Princeton anthropology professor Alan Mann for their unethical possession of MOVE remains. 

Despite the Pennsylvania Historical Commission issuing a historical marker about the MOVE bombing in 2017 after a successful campaign led by students at the Jubilee School who researched the event for a class project, many residents, activists and journalists have noted that MOVE remains a too-often ignored part of the city’s history. 

The mistreatment of MOVE members is fueled by the harmful myths that surround the MOVE community. Founded in the early 1970s, MOVE is a Black anarcho-primitivist community organization that advocated for the return to a natural lifestyle through a raw diet, Black nationalism and avoiding technology. Orr-El noted that MOVE was “ostracized” for promoting fresh fruits and vegetables long before wellness became a mainstream trend.

Africa reiterated that “MOVE loved its children” and refuted a recent exchange he had on social media with a user who claimed that the organization used children as human shields during the 1985 police attack. 

“When you look at us, we are not animals,” Orr-El said. “We aren’t savages.” 

Africa said advocates will continue focusing on “street action” to drive forth their demands before pursuing legal avenues. Supporters hosted a rally on Monday explicitly calling for the release of Abu-Jamal. On May 10, advocates said they will organize “MOVE Day” and encourage 10,000 people to join them in a march in Philadelphia. The 10,000 represents the number of bullets shot by police into MOVE headquarters on the day of the bombing.

At the press conference, when Orr-El was asked how she would like her sister to be remembered, her answer lay in the same smile that masks her pain.

“I’m going to flash this smile,” she said. “I’ve been told I have a great smile. Delisha had my smile. … Remember my smile. It’s hers.”