May 9, 2025 • 30 mins
I’m joined by two powerful voices in journalism and education — Yvonne Latty, executive producer of the new podcast MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy and director of the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Temple University, and Linn Washington, veteran journalist and podcast host who has reported on the MOVE story for more than 50 years. Their six-part podcast, produced in collaboration with The Philadelphia Inquirer, revisits the 1985 MOVE bombing — when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a residential home, killing 11 people (including five children) and destroying 61 homes. It remains the only time in U.S. history that a police force bombed its own city. Through firsthand accounts, rare archival audio, and the voices of journalists, survivors, and community leaders, MOVE: Untangling the Tragedy unpacks a story that Philadelphia — and the nation — must continue to confront.
🎧 Listen and learn more at: inquirer.com/move-bombing
📅 On May 17th at Temple University there will be a staged reading of Move Mocks Us All, a powerful play written by journalist Maida Odom. The reading brings the podcast’s themes to life and invites deeper reflection on the legacy of MOVE.
📲 Follow the conversation:
@Inquirer (Twitter/Instagram/Facebook)
@TempleKlein and @LoganCenterPHL (Twitter/X and Instagram)
🎧 Listen and learn more at: inquirer.com/move-bombing
📅 On May 17th at Temple University there will be a staged reading of Move Mocks Us All, a powerful play written by journalist Maida Odom. The reading brings the podcast’s themes to life and invites deeper reflection on the legacy of MOVE.
📲 Follow the conversation:
@Inquirer (Twitter/Instagram/Facebook)
@TempleKlein and @LoganCenterPHL (Twitter/X and Instagram)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 3 (00:00):
Good morning.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to a special edition of Insight, a show
about empowering our community. I'm Lorraine Balladmorrel. Today we are
joined by two powerful voices in journalism and education, Yvonne Laddie,
executive producer of the new podcast Move Untangling the Tragedy
and director of the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting
(00:21):
at Temple University, and Lynn Washington, a veteran journalist and
podcast host who's covered the Move story for more than
fifty years. Their six part podcast, produced in collaboration with
the Philadelphia Inquirer, revisits the nineteen eighty five Move bombing,
when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a home, killing
(00:41):
eleven people, including five children, and destroying sixty one homes.
This is the only time in US history that a
police force has bombed its own city. Through first hand accounts,
rare audio, and the voices of journalists, survivors, and community leaders,
Move Untangling the Tragedy tells the story Philadelphia and the
(01:05):
nation still needs to confront. So we're speaking today with
both Yvonne Letty and Lynn Washington, and I'm going to
start with you, Yvonne. This podcast as a collaboration between
Temple's Logan Center and The Inquirer. How did that partnership
come about and what did it bring to the project.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We had worked with the Inquirer before on a series
on sports as a solution to gun violence. And you know,
both Lynn and I are a product of sort of
the you know, Inquirer daily news journalism system, and I've
often felt weird and bad that it was sad that
(01:44):
the Inquirer has not really embraced narrative podcasts as they should.
And when we sort of formulated this idea, I think
we both just knew they would be the perfect partners.
You know, they are the newspaper, a record of Philadelphia,
and they have a lot of reach and a reach
(02:05):
into diverse communities. And this podcast, more than anything, is
really for all Philadelphians and really, in my head, all
of America to really look at and confront what happened
forty years ago. And I just thought they would be
the perfect partner. And in many ways, in more ways
than I could imagine, they really have been.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
They've been really great to work with.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Lynn. You've covered move for over five decades. Why did
you feel that now is the right time to revisit
this story through the podcast format.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
A couple of reasons. One, the story of Move is
in some ways known, but is really not known, And
this podcast gave us an opportunity to really look at
MOVE and do it in such a way that expands
beyond what happened on that horrific day of May thirteenth,
nineteen eighty five. So we really look at Move not
(02:59):
only its inception in the early seventies, but we take
it back to actually the birth of its founder, John Africa,
back in the nineteen thirty So this is really a
unique project that we're doing because it gives the sweep
of the Move organization, but it also presents voices of
people who were integral to this and very important to
(03:21):
it that you never hear from. And then just having
the opportunity to work with y Vaughn, it's like, okay,
we're good to go.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well, Ivon Linn mentioned that some of the voices have
never really been truly heard, and I wonder if you
can talk about that and also some of the other
challenges that you had managing this production and the tone
of a story this painful and complex.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Well, I think in general, when you look at the
history of reporting in Philadelphia in America. A lot of
the time, stories are told from the top down, so
you get you know, officials, and you know lawyers and
maybe sort of who would be the main speakers for
each group, but you don't really dig in that deep.
(04:06):
And I think that's been a big problem with the
Mood story in general. With the exception of Lynn and
a few others back fifty years ago, they just weren't
getting people, weren't really understanding who they were, what they
were doing, the harm they were inflicting on communities, as
well as how to maybe help them and what their
(04:28):
needs were. So I think the story was really ignored,
and I think until nineteen eighty five or nineteen seventy
eight when you had sort of the big splash and
all the reporters show up. And so I think that
what we've done is really like dug deep, you know,
using our kial tape, really trying to string together what
was going on on the ground level, talking to people
(04:50):
that were sort of in the middle of this but
weren't really given a microphone to talk about what they
were seeing and experiencing and what they were trying to do.
Attempts that were made to sort of work with MOVE,
attempts that were in ma to work with them, sort
of the whole thing. And that's why I think we
called it untangling the tragedy, because I think that's what
(05:12):
we do, is we really try to untangle it and
just show everyone this is what happened, you know, the
raw and naked truth. And I want to give a
really big shout out to a student of mine, Natalie Wright,
who started working on this with me before she graduated
and stuck with us. And this woman is not a
(05:34):
historian or some kind of archival research you know, nerd,
but really took took it on, you know, and it
was such a team effort. But the center of this
work is really the reporting of Lynn Washington, the fifty
years of really traumatic reporting covering this complicated reporting.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Lynn, we're talking about untangling the tragedy, and I wonder
if you can talk about what that means for you
as someone who has covered the layers of this story
for so long. This has been something that really has
been very close to you in terms of your career
as a journalist.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, it's funny. I've been covering Move for you know,
like you said, over fifty years. I'm only forty two
years old, so I don't understand the math on a
real tip. So much of the coverage with Move, and
there has been a lot of coverage, it's been episodic.
You know, this event and that event, and the context
(06:38):
and the endemic nature of it has been bypassed. So
this podcast gives us an opportunity to tell the story
and bring all of the currents together. Move has been
clearly victimized, but one of the things that's been missing
is the fact that MOVE has been a victimizer as
(06:59):
it has tried to to put forth, you know, its
story and its philosophy. So being able to tell that
story has been really for me, you know, quite cathartic,
because I didn't realize that I was carrying such a
burden with this because I've just been covering and the Covenant,
(07:19):
and when we were working on the actually working on
the episode of the actual May thirteenth, that day, you know,
once we concluded, I mean I just became so overwhelmed.
It was the first time in forty years that I
shed a tear about this. And I don't mean to
minimize I mean, this thing has hurt me ever since
(07:40):
May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, but it's never been a tear.
And that tear came and I had to apologize to
You're born. You know, I'm a man. I'm supposed to
have this, you know, tough veneer. It finally came out.
But it has just been been good to be able
to tell the whole story that I've been trying to
tell over the year. So as Yvonne said, this in
(08:02):
many ways is a collection of all the work that
I've done. Standing in front of the move compound and
Poleton Village in slushy snow and still feeling my feet
cold on that day of May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five.
You know, at one point late in the evening, I
actually went behind the houses and it was like walking
(08:22):
through a canyon of It wasn't like it was walking
through a canyon of fire. And my skin was boiling,
so I could feel still feel the heat, still feel
the cold. So it was just good to be able
to tell this story.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, I guess it also speaks to what people don't
often acknowledge, and that is the impact of a story
on the heart and soul of the journalist who is
reporting on the story. So I appreciate you shedding a
light on that, Yvonne. I remember moved very clearly because
I was reporting from the studio and I had a
(08:58):
reporter who was actually out on scene dodging the bullets
what I experienced at that time because we had some
police officers that were with one of our AM station
that was actually there, and I was chatting with them,
and I was really I was so taken aback by
the callousness of these particular police officers when I said,
(09:23):
you know, there are kids in that house, and the
disregard for that very fact really shocked me at the time.
And I wonder if we can maybe talk a bit
about the landscape of that time, and something that people
don't necessarily acknowledge openly was the attitude of law enforcement
(09:47):
at that time. Not to say that all law enforcement
felt that way, but I experienced firsthand an attitude that
was truly disregarding the human lives, particularly the kids that
were involved in this move disaster.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I mean, that's one of the things I find the
most heartbreaking about it all. I did another podcast, I
guess two years ago with Wayy News called Stop intersk,
Revisit or Resist, And that was the first time I
really started digging deep into Philadelphia's policing policies of the past,
(10:24):
specifically Frank Brizzo, who is a pretty big character in
this podcast for at least the first two episodes, and
he seems his shadow seems to loom over everything. And
Philadelphia had a very macho police force and there was
no regard for black people in so many ways, especially
(10:48):
black men. You know, a police force that says that
they could you know, invade Cuba and win. A police
force that strips black men naked and throws them up
against the wall as stop as their version of stop
and frisk. I mean, it was completely out of control,
you know, banging school kids' heads because they're protesting for
(11:10):
better conditions in the school. And this was accepted. This
kind of treatment was accepted. So by the time MOVE
comes on the scene, it's just, you know, these are
not people that the police are going to respect. And
then when you look at what happened in nineteen seventy eight,
which was just so many ways ridiculous, but a police
officer was killed, it just got them even that much
(11:32):
more charged up against Move and for the life of me,
you know, I wasn't there and I wasn't reporting in
Philadelphia then, But for the life of me, I can't
figure out how come they didn't get those children out
of the house.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, where is DHS?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Like, They're not going to school, They're eating out of
garbage cans. They have extended stomachs because they're starving. They're
eating raw potatoes and raw garlic and onion for food.
And no one, no system, goes in there. And you
got you know that you're going to that's you're gonna
(12:09):
evict these people.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
You're gonna make these arrests.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
You don't care, nothing is going to stop you, and
you don't get the kids out first. And in that way,
I also criticize the move people because if they were
going to do a you know, a stand like that,
they should not have had innocent children in the middle
of that. So Philadelphia, like most of America, like most
of urban America, was very brutal in their treatment of
(12:35):
black people in terms of policing, and this to me
is just almost a culmination, you know of it all
was dropping a bomb in a neighborhood, incinerating people, and
then not having any even an ounce of regard to
put the fire out so that these black middle class
(12:55):
people who are homeowners, who are striving for the American
dream don't have to be completely destroyed too.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But instead no one seemed to care.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And that, I tell you, really it really breaks my heart.
It really really does.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Lynn, you have been covering this particular issue for a
very long time, many decades, and we've seen many iterations
of our perception of what happened at the Move tragedy.
There was a commission looked at all the different factors there.
I wonder if you can talk about what the perceptions,
(13:33):
how that's changed over time, you know, certainly starting with
people's perceptions of what happened, then the commission coming up
with their own conclusions. And now as we round get
close to the fortieth anniversary of the Move tragedy, how
has that story evolved? And what does this podcast do
(13:54):
you think? How does it frame this story differently perhaps
than people have previously seen the story as well?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
The title I think answers the question that you're asking.
Untangling the tragedy, We really peel back the layers and
let people see exactly what happened, you know, with facts
and archival material like the just tremendous information that Natalie
was able to, you know, compile, and then r. Vaughn
(14:26):
with her just excellent script that she put together. And
looking at this over the years, there's been some changes
and there hasn't been other changes. The callousness that you
just talked about in terms of the police, in some
ways that's mitigated a little bit, but it's still there
and it was very evident on May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five,
(14:47):
because we look at the callousness as it relates to
the children. The police commissioner during those commission hearings came
out and said that he felt that the kids, the
children were combatants for a minute, he considered the children combatants,
thus no compassion for them. But the actual police operational
(15:10):
plan from the moment that they went on O Sage
at five point thirty in the morning on May thirteenth,
there was no regard for black property rights. Their initial
plan was to drill holes from the adjoining houses of
sixty two twenty one and put explosive charges in there,
So they were going to blow up three houses owned
(15:31):
by black people. Before they even started that, they're dumping tons.
I mean tens of thousands of gallons of water on houses,
so they were going to destroy the property. But one
of the things I've also noticed over the years, and
it just really kind of like blows my mind. Move
has lost the many battles, but they've won the war.
(15:52):
They are now seen as this black revolutionary group in Perrine.
Forget the fact that they made war on black people,
not only on o Sage Avenue but also on Pileton Village.
They're seen as these environmentalists because they were composting. No,
they were just putting garbage in their yard and just
leaving it there. Thus, you know, rats, roaches, vermin, all
(16:15):
kinds of other things. So people have now this romanticized
view of what happened. You know, one side was all
put upon another side, you know, was the victim, not
the victims of it. And we still hear from MOVE
people saying, well, why did all of this happen because
it was just some housing code violations? Okay, would you
(16:38):
want to live? Would you move? Member want to live
next to what was going on? Would move? Many of
them would say no, So you know the neighbors wouldn't.
So it's just been incredible watching this evolution. But part
of it is because we just have in America this
inability to learn from the past and also to study
the past and study the press so we could figure
(17:01):
out how we can move forward in a better way.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Mayor Wilson Good was the first black mayor elected to
the city of Philadelphia, and there was a tremendous amount
of optimism and pride in his election. Move has forever
darkened that reputation. And you had the opportunity to interview
Wilson Good, and I wonder if you can share with
(17:25):
us what you feel as though his feelings are currently
about that tragedy and how it impacted his own history,
his own story.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I've lived with this.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You should probably take it. But I will say this
to get it started. It's one of the things about
doing this podcast. It's some of these interviews like I
literally I could have just dropped to the ground.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
And this was this was one of them.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It was really an incredible thing to hear from him
and hear what he had to say in terms of
I think basically his excuses for not being there, for
not stopping it. But I'll let Lynn take it from there.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
That's just the one.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Well, clearly this had an impact on Reverend Goods just
whole life, his whole legacy. It's tarnished. He's gotten a
lot of the blame, and rightfully so, but I think
some of it is outsized. I think one clear indicator
of the impact that this had on him is that
(18:43):
when he left office, he didn't go to well, he
wasn't a lawyer, so he couldn't go to a big
shot law firm, but he didn't go into corporations or
anything like that. He went to Divinity school, he became
a minister, and I think that was an effort to
try to find some redemption. But one of the things
that when Yvonne and I interviewed him, and he was gracious,
how when he asked for thirty minutes and ninety minutes later,
(19:05):
it's like, is your battery still work? On your requorder?
But when we asked him, you know, one of the
I forget how the question came up, but his response
was that he was still hurting because of the depths
of the children, you know, the five children that were
murdered on that day. But one of the things that
I found that I found disturbing when we asked him
(19:27):
about his reaction of what happened to the residents of
Osage Avenue and some of those on Addison and Pine
Street whose houses and lives were burned to the ground,
and his response was, well, you know, people who died,
they can't come back. But if you just lose everything
in life, you still have your life, so you can
(19:47):
move on. And with all due respect, I found that
callous because here these people's lives were just turned upside down.
Everything they had was destroyed. One woman who was the
sister of the basketball legend Will Chamberlain, she had his
high school awards, in his college awards burn up. A
(20:10):
guy who's been collecting jazz records for thirty years melted
in a way, family momentos and all of that. So
there was in his mind no big deal. They survived.
But that just again shows me a callous disregard for
the lives and humanity of black people. And I'm not
(20:32):
in any way saying that. You know, he's a callous man.
You know, he's a very he's a man of faith.
I believe that he tried to do the was subsequently
May thirteen, try to do the best job that he could,
but just to have that attitude where it's like, well,
no big deal. You know, they lived to see another
another day. But how did they live to see it?
(20:55):
One of the things that that fire burning and bombing
did was just blow up their psychic sense of emotional security.
You know, you ask for help, they say, you know,
take a town on a toothbrush. You'll be home tomorrow.
And when you come back. As I saw on a
film last night, a film called Philly on Fire, they
(21:16):
were talking to the block captain Clifford Bond, and he said,
when he came back, the only thing he saw were
the two walls on either side of the house. Everything
else is between it. All of his life is Furniture's
possessions were just gone. And I think that within the
historical context, just shows that the type of disregard that
(21:37):
black people have received in this country forever.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I wonder if you can share with us, Van, what
kinds of reactions that you received from those learning about
it through this podcast.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I mean, the feedback for the podcast has been in
general very very good and positive, which I was really
worried about because before the podcast came out on Facebook,
I mean, there were fights blowing up about it between
sort of MOVED supporters and people that were supportive of
the police, and people that were in the middle, people
(22:11):
who had experienced it and were just like wanting to
talk about what they saw, like almost as a form
of therapy. So I didn't really know, like what was
going to happen when it came out. I thought maybe
the MOVE people would be mad, But the response has
been has been really positive. Some of the reporters who
are in the podcast, I was worried too, You're like, oh,
(22:34):
they might feel like I got to personal. There's some
people talk to you and they don't really want you
to say what they what they tell you. But the
feedback has been has been really incredible. But I think
the thing that touches me the most is when young
people who know nothing about MOVE now know and care
(22:55):
and want to learn more and want to understand. One
of the most beautiful texts I got was one of
my daughter's friends who listened to what emailed her and
was really mad that it was only one episode, like
how could I do this to her? Kind of vib
like she needed to have all the episodes that she
could binge it, and she was really upset and she
(23:17):
desperately wanted to know what was going to happen. Lynn
has become a little minor heart throb. I'm getting a
lot of emails about him from people about her voice.
So it's turned into something that you know, I had
a lot of angst over I worked so hard on
We all did, and you know, you put your baby
in the world and you just don't know. But I'm
(23:39):
so happy that we did it. And I think it's
life is just beginning. I mean, we have the play,
the stage reading that's coming up, and I just really
hope that not only Philadelphians but America really.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Embrace this story and just try to figure things out.
I mean, I think we need to talk about stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I don't think it should always be the black people
that were always the victim. Sometimes it's a lot more
complicated than that, and I think this is very complicated.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I just want to make a note that you refer
to the May seventeenth stage reading of Move Marxist All,
which is at Temple, a play written by Mida Odin,
who is one of the journalists featured in the podcast,
and we'll have when we post this as a podcast,
we'll have all that information in the podcast description. But
(24:31):
for both of you as educators at Temple, what lessons
do you hope the next generation of journalists learns from
how the move story was covered and uncovered over time?
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Well, if I could just grab a quote from Jesse
Jackson that other people claim that it really wasn't his
quote but somebody else's. He says that texts without contexts
is pretexts, and as journalists, we need to provide that context.
And that's not something that is a new concept, because
providing context is a provision in a society professional journalists
(25:06):
Code of Ethics. For me, what I would hope that
the next generation and succeeding generations of journalists do is
do what we're supposed to do. Just do some hardcore reporting.
Get out in the street, you know, talk to people
and try to really unearth the facts and then connect
those facts to what's really going on.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yvon.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
One of the things I've learned myself personally from working
on this project is this podcast in this story is
also an example of war reporting.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I also think that reporters are really brave to we
run to things where other people are running the other way.
I think that we often get a bad reputation or
there's some sort of idea people have of who we are.
And I think this podcast is filled with our humanity,
and I think that that's a really important thing to see.
So many of the things Link says, he's just like
(26:02):
a guy, you know, trying to like do the job,
you know, and Made and Pete and Barbara and all
the reporters that are in here are just people just
doing the best they can. And it's really complicated when
you're covering a story about a community you feel like
you're part of, you know. But I think the humanity
comes out, and I think that's something I want young
(26:24):
reporters to look at, is their humanity and their empathy.
And I just think it's really important that we know
our history, especially at a time when it's not considered important.
I think doing work that is based on black history
is almost a subversive like come act, because it's not
(26:45):
something that I feel like our administration wants us to do.
But I think that this kind of is really important
to do right now, and to do it fairly and honestly,
warts and all. But I think it's really important that
we learn history. I think history is the roadmap for
the future, and so I want young journalists to look
(27:05):
at this and think about things like context and you know,
things that are sitting to suddenly appear when they were born.
You know, there's a reason why the world is like this,
but why the city is like this. And even in
looking at move and talking to mayor Good, I mean,
you see where we've gotten a lot better at certain things,
and you see like where we have some work to
do still. For me, that's like a gift that the
(27:29):
podcast can give. And I think it's a gift that
I was given by working with Lynn. To be honest,
I mean I learned. You know, you're never too old
to learn. I learned so much, and I know that
all the members of the team, I think I could
speak for everyone. I think we all learned so much.
That's more than anything. This is an educational tool.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah. For listeners who want to explore the series or
attend the many events that are associated with the podcast,
where can they find episodes, event details and follow updates.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
You can find the podcast wherever you get your podcast.
It's on Apple, Spotify, I mean those are sort of
the bigger platforms. Just Google you find it, or go
to your podcast app and you'll find it. The Inquirer
also is do an amazing job of pulling archival stories
written so if it's not if it's the bombing, they
(28:22):
have this whole all these stories about the bombing, about
the neighborhoods. You actually can listen to the podcast. You
can see the work of reporters like Lynn and Meida
and others that are featured. It's a really cool site.
We have our directed reading coming up on May seventeenth.
You can go to Templelogancenter dot org. The right in
(28:43):
the middle of the page is a link that'll take
you to the event. Right please register. It's going to
be at the Tomlinson Theater. And one of the coolest
things about this project is the director, Ontaria Kim Wilson,
was a ten year old child and saw the bomb
drop from her windows. Wow, our director, and she's an MFA.
(29:08):
She's just getting her MFA now from Temple. So it's
just an incredible project. And the play was written as
a form of healing from by Meta Odom who had
you know, PTSD because of this incident, because of what
she witnessed.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, thank you both for joining us today. Two powerful
voices in journalism and education. Yvonne Laddie, executive producer of
the new podcast Move Untangling the Tragedy and director of
the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Temple. And
Lynn Washington, veteran journalist and podcast host who's covered the
move story for more than fifty years.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Thank you both, beg you Breth.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
You can listen to all of today's interviews by going
to our station website and typing in keyword Community. You
can also listen on the iHeartRadio app yey Words Philadelphia
Community Podcast. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Lorraine Ballard.
I'm Lorraine Ballard Morrel and I stand for service to
our community and media that empowers. What will you stand for?
(30:09):
You've been listening to Insight and thank you.
Good morning.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to a special edition of Insight, a show
about empowering our community. I'm Lorraine Balladmorrel. Today we are
joined by two powerful voices in journalism and education, Yvonne Laddie,
executive producer of the new podcast Move Untangling the Tragedy
and director of the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting
(00:21):
at Temple University, and Lynn Washington, a veteran journalist and
podcast host who's covered the Move story for more than
fifty years. Their six part podcast, produced in collaboration with
the Philadelphia Inquirer, revisits the nineteen eighty five Move bombing,
when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a home, killing
(00:41):
eleven people, including five children, and destroying sixty one homes.
This is the only time in US history that a
police force has bombed its own city. Through first hand accounts,
rare audio, and the voices of journalists, survivors, and community leaders,
Move Untangling the Tragedy tells the story Philadelphia and the
(01:05):
nation still needs to confront. So we're speaking today with
both Yvonne Letty and Lynn Washington, and I'm going to
start with you, Yvonne. This podcast as a collaboration between
Temple's Logan Center and The Inquirer. How did that partnership
come about and what did it bring to the project.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We had worked with the Inquirer before on a series
on sports as a solution to gun violence. And you know,
both Lynn and I are a product of sort of
the you know, Inquirer daily news journalism system, and I've
often felt weird and bad that it was sad that
(01:44):
the Inquirer has not really embraced narrative podcasts as they should.
And when we sort of formulated this idea, I think
we both just knew they would be the perfect partners.
You know, they are the newspaper, a record of Philadelphia,
and they have a lot of reach and a reach
(02:05):
into diverse communities. And this podcast, more than anything, is
really for all Philadelphians and really, in my head, all
of America to really look at and confront what happened
forty years ago. And I just thought they would be
the perfect partner. And in many ways, in more ways
than I could imagine, they really have been.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
They've been really great to work with.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Lynn. You've covered move for over five decades. Why did
you feel that now is the right time to revisit
this story through the podcast format.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
A couple of reasons. One, the story of Move is
in some ways known, but is really not known, And
this podcast gave us an opportunity to really look at
MOVE and do it in such a way that expands
beyond what happened on that horrific day of May thirteenth,
nineteen eighty five. So we really look at Move not
(02:59):
only its inception in the early seventies, but we take
it back to actually the birth of its founder, John Africa,
back in the nineteen thirty So this is really a
unique project that we're doing because it gives the sweep
of the Move organization, but it also presents voices of
people who were integral to this and very important to
(03:21):
it that you never hear from. And then just having
the opportunity to work with y Vaughn, it's like, okay,
we're good to go.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well, Ivon Linn mentioned that some of the voices have
never really been truly heard, and I wonder if you
can talk about that and also some of the other
challenges that you had managing this production and the tone
of a story this painful and complex.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Well, I think in general, when you look at the
history of reporting in Philadelphia in America. A lot of
the time, stories are told from the top down, so
you get you know, officials, and you know lawyers and
maybe sort of who would be the main speakers for
each group, but you don't really dig in that deep.
(04:06):
And I think that's been a big problem with the
Mood story in general. With the exception of Lynn and
a few others back fifty years ago, they just weren't
getting people, weren't really understanding who they were, what they
were doing, the harm they were inflicting on communities, as
well as how to maybe help them and what their
(04:28):
needs were. So I think the story was really ignored,
and I think until nineteen eighty five or nineteen seventy
eight when you had sort of the big splash and
all the reporters show up. And so I think that
what we've done is really like dug deep, you know,
using our kial tape, really trying to string together what
was going on on the ground level, talking to people
(04:50):
that were sort of in the middle of this but
weren't really given a microphone to talk about what they
were seeing and experiencing and what they were trying to do.
Attempts that were made to sort of work with MOVE,
attempts that were in ma to work with them, sort
of the whole thing. And that's why I think we
called it untangling the tragedy, because I think that's what
(05:12):
we do, is we really try to untangle it and
just show everyone this is what happened, you know, the
raw and naked truth. And I want to give a
really big shout out to a student of mine, Natalie Wright,
who started working on this with me before she graduated
and stuck with us. And this woman is not a
(05:34):
historian or some kind of archival research you know, nerd,
but really took took it on, you know, and it
was such a team effort. But the center of this
work is really the reporting of Lynn Washington, the fifty
years of really traumatic reporting covering this complicated reporting.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Lynn, we're talking about untangling the tragedy, and I wonder
if you can talk about what that means for you
as someone who has covered the layers of this story
for so long. This has been something that really has
been very close to you in terms of your career
as a journalist.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, it's funny. I've been covering Move for you know,
like you said, over fifty years. I'm only forty two
years old, so I don't understand the math on a
real tip. So much of the coverage with Move, and
there has been a lot of coverage, it's been episodic.
You know, this event and that event, and the context
(06:38):
and the endemic nature of it has been bypassed. So
this podcast gives us an opportunity to tell the story
and bring all of the currents together. Move has been
clearly victimized, but one of the things that's been missing
is the fact that MOVE has been a victimizer as
(06:59):
it has tried to to put forth, you know, its
story and its philosophy. So being able to tell that
story has been really for me, you know, quite cathartic,
because I didn't realize that I was carrying such a
burden with this because I've just been covering and the Covenant,
(07:19):
and when we were working on the actually working on
the episode of the actual May thirteenth, that day, you know,
once we concluded, I mean I just became so overwhelmed.
It was the first time in forty years that I
shed a tear about this. And I don't mean to
minimize I mean, this thing has hurt me ever since
(07:40):
May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, but it's never been a tear.
And that tear came and I had to apologize to
You're born. You know, I'm a man. I'm supposed to
have this, you know, tough veneer. It finally came out.
But it has just been been good to be able
to tell the whole story that I've been trying to
tell over the year. So as Yvonne said, this in
(08:02):
many ways is a collection of all the work that
I've done. Standing in front of the move compound and
Poleton Village in slushy snow and still feeling my feet
cold on that day of May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five.
You know, at one point late in the evening, I
actually went behind the houses and it was like walking
(08:22):
through a canyon of It wasn't like it was walking
through a canyon of fire. And my skin was boiling,
so I could feel still feel the heat, still feel
the cold. So it was just good to be able
to tell this story.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, I guess it also speaks to what people don't
often acknowledge, and that is the impact of a story
on the heart and soul of the journalist who is
reporting on the story. So I appreciate you shedding a
light on that, Yvonne. I remember moved very clearly because
I was reporting from the studio and I had a
(08:58):
reporter who was actually out on scene dodging the bullets
what I experienced at that time because we had some
police officers that were with one of our AM station
that was actually there, and I was chatting with them,
and I was really I was so taken aback by
the callousness of these particular police officers when I said,
(09:23):
you know, there are kids in that house, and the
disregard for that very fact really shocked me at the time.
And I wonder if we can maybe talk a bit
about the landscape of that time, and something that people
don't necessarily acknowledge openly was the attitude of law enforcement
(09:47):
at that time. Not to say that all law enforcement
felt that way, but I experienced firsthand an attitude that
was truly disregarding the human lives, particularly the kids that
were involved in this move disaster.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I mean, that's one of the things I find the
most heartbreaking about it all. I did another podcast, I
guess two years ago with Wayy News called Stop intersk,
Revisit or Resist, And that was the first time I
really started digging deep into Philadelphia's policing policies of the past,
(10:24):
specifically Frank Brizzo, who is a pretty big character in
this podcast for at least the first two episodes, and
he seems his shadow seems to loom over everything. And
Philadelphia had a very macho police force and there was
no regard for black people in so many ways, especially
(10:48):
black men. You know, a police force that says that
they could you know, invade Cuba and win. A police
force that strips black men naked and throws them up
against the wall as stop as their version of stop
and frisk. I mean, it was completely out of control,
you know, banging school kids' heads because they're protesting for
(11:10):
better conditions in the school. And this was accepted. This
kind of treatment was accepted. So by the time MOVE
comes on the scene, it's just, you know, these are
not people that the police are going to respect. And
then when you look at what happened in nineteen seventy eight,
which was just so many ways ridiculous, but a police
officer was killed, it just got them even that much
(11:32):
more charged up against Move and for the life of me,
you know, I wasn't there and I wasn't reporting in
Philadelphia then, But for the life of me, I can't
figure out how come they didn't get those children out
of the house.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, where is DHS?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Like, They're not going to school, They're eating out of
garbage cans. They have extended stomachs because they're starving. They're
eating raw potatoes and raw garlic and onion for food.
And no one, no system, goes in there. And you
got you know that you're going to that's you're gonna
(12:09):
evict these people.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
You're gonna make these arrests.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
You don't care, nothing is going to stop you, and
you don't get the kids out first. And in that way,
I also criticize the move people because if they were
going to do a you know, a stand like that,
they should not have had innocent children in the middle
of that. So Philadelphia, like most of America, like most
of urban America, was very brutal in their treatment of
(12:35):
black people in terms of policing, and this to me
is just almost a culmination, you know of it all
was dropping a bomb in a neighborhood, incinerating people, and
then not having any even an ounce of regard to
put the fire out so that these black middle class
(12:55):
people who are homeowners, who are striving for the American
dream don't have to be completely destroyed too.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But instead no one seemed to care.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And that, I tell you, really it really breaks my heart.
It really really does.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Lynn, you have been covering this particular issue for a
very long time, many decades, and we've seen many iterations
of our perception of what happened at the Move tragedy.
There was a commission looked at all the different factors there.
I wonder if you can talk about what the perceptions,
(13:33):
how that's changed over time, you know, certainly starting with
people's perceptions of what happened, then the commission coming up
with their own conclusions. And now as we round get
close to the fortieth anniversary of the Move tragedy, how
has that story evolved? And what does this podcast do
(13:54):
you think? How does it frame this story differently perhaps
than people have previously seen the story as well?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
The title I think answers the question that you're asking.
Untangling the tragedy, We really peel back the layers and
let people see exactly what happened, you know, with facts
and archival material like the just tremendous information that Natalie
was able to, you know, compile, and then r. Vaughn
(14:26):
with her just excellent script that she put together. And
looking at this over the years, there's been some changes
and there hasn't been other changes. The callousness that you
just talked about in terms of the police, in some
ways that's mitigated a little bit, but it's still there
and it was very evident on May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five,
(14:47):
because we look at the callousness as it relates to
the children. The police commissioner during those commission hearings came
out and said that he felt that the kids, the
children were combatants for a minute, he considered the children combatants,
thus no compassion for them. But the actual police operational
(15:10):
plan from the moment that they went on O Sage
at five point thirty in the morning on May thirteenth,
there was no regard for black property rights. Their initial
plan was to drill holes from the adjoining houses of
sixty two twenty one and put explosive charges in there,
So they were going to blow up three houses owned
(15:31):
by black people. Before they even started that, they're dumping tons.
I mean tens of thousands of gallons of water on houses,
so they were going to destroy the property. But one
of the things I've also noticed over the years, and
it just really kind of like blows my mind. Move
has lost the many battles, but they've won the war.
(15:52):
They are now seen as this black revolutionary group in Perrine.
Forget the fact that they made war on black people,
not only on o Sage Avenue but also on Pileton Village.
They're seen as these environmentalists because they were composting. No,
they were just putting garbage in their yard and just
leaving it there. Thus, you know, rats, roaches, vermin, all
(16:15):
kinds of other things. So people have now this romanticized
view of what happened. You know, one side was all
put upon another side, you know, was the victim, not
the victims of it. And we still hear from MOVE
people saying, well, why did all of this happen because
it was just some housing code violations? Okay, would you
(16:38):
want to live? Would you move? Member want to live
next to what was going on? Would move? Many of
them would say no, So you know the neighbors wouldn't.
So it's just been incredible watching this evolution. But part
of it is because we just have in America this
inability to learn from the past and also to study
the past and study the press so we could figure
(17:01):
out how we can move forward in a better way.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Mayor Wilson Good was the first black mayor elected to
the city of Philadelphia, and there was a tremendous amount
of optimism and pride in his election. Move has forever
darkened that reputation. And you had the opportunity to interview
Wilson Good, and I wonder if you can share with
(17:25):
us what you feel as though his feelings are currently
about that tragedy and how it impacted his own history,
his own story.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I've lived with this.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You should probably take it. But I will say this
to get it started. It's one of the things about
doing this podcast. It's some of these interviews like I
literally I could have just dropped to the ground.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
And this was this was one of them.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It was really an incredible thing to hear from him
and hear what he had to say in terms of
I think basically his excuses for not being there, for
not stopping it. But I'll let Lynn take it from there.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
That's just the one.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Well, clearly this had an impact on Reverend Goods just
whole life, his whole legacy. It's tarnished. He's gotten a
lot of the blame, and rightfully so, but I think
some of it is outsized. I think one clear indicator
of the impact that this had on him is that
(18:43):
when he left office, he didn't go to well, he
wasn't a lawyer, so he couldn't go to a big
shot law firm, but he didn't go into corporations or
anything like that. He went to Divinity school, he became
a minister, and I think that was an effort to
try to find some redemption. But one of the things
that when Yvonne and I interviewed him, and he was gracious,
how when he asked for thirty minutes and ninety minutes later,
(19:05):
it's like, is your battery still work? On your requorder?
But when we asked him, you know, one of the
I forget how the question came up, but his response
was that he was still hurting because of the depths
of the children, you know, the five children that were
murdered on that day. But one of the things that
I found that I found disturbing when we asked him
(19:27):
about his reaction of what happened to the residents of
Osage Avenue and some of those on Addison and Pine
Street whose houses and lives were burned to the ground,
and his response was, well, you know, people who died,
they can't come back. But if you just lose everything
in life, you still have your life, so you can
(19:47):
move on. And with all due respect, I found that
callous because here these people's lives were just turned upside down.
Everything they had was destroyed. One woman who was the
sister of the basketball legend Will Chamberlain, she had his
high school awards, in his college awards burn up. A
(20:10):
guy who's been collecting jazz records for thirty years melted
in a way, family momentos and all of that. So
there was in his mind no big deal. They survived.
But that just again shows me a callous disregard for
the lives and humanity of black people. And I'm not
(20:32):
in any way saying that. You know, he's a callous man.
You know, he's a very he's a man of faith.
I believe that he tried to do the was subsequently
May thirteen, try to do the best job that he could,
but just to have that attitude where it's like, well,
no big deal. You know, they lived to see another
another day. But how did they live to see it?
(20:55):
One of the things that that fire burning and bombing
did was just blow up their psychic sense of emotional security.
You know, you ask for help, they say, you know,
take a town on a toothbrush. You'll be home tomorrow.
And when you come back. As I saw on a
film last night, a film called Philly on Fire, they
(21:16):
were talking to the block captain Clifford Bond, and he said,
when he came back, the only thing he saw were
the two walls on either side of the house. Everything
else is between it. All of his life is Furniture's
possessions were just gone. And I think that within the
historical context, just shows that the type of disregard that
(21:37):
black people have received in this country forever.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I wonder if you can share with us, Van, what
kinds of reactions that you received from those learning about
it through this podcast.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I mean, the feedback for the podcast has been in
general very very good and positive, which I was really
worried about because before the podcast came out on Facebook,
I mean, there were fights blowing up about it between
sort of MOVED supporters and people that were supportive of
the police, and people that were in the middle, people
(22:11):
who had experienced it and were just like wanting to
talk about what they saw, like almost as a form
of therapy. So I didn't really know, like what was
going to happen when it came out. I thought maybe
the MOVE people would be mad, But the response has
been has been really positive. Some of the reporters who
are in the podcast, I was worried too, You're like, oh,
(22:34):
they might feel like I got to personal. There's some
people talk to you and they don't really want you
to say what they what they tell you. But the
feedback has been has been really incredible. But I think
the thing that touches me the most is when young
people who know nothing about MOVE now know and care
(22:55):
and want to learn more and want to understand. One
of the most beautiful texts I got was one of
my daughter's friends who listened to what emailed her and
was really mad that it was only one episode, like
how could I do this to her? Kind of vib
like she needed to have all the episodes that she
could binge it, and she was really upset and she
(23:17):
desperately wanted to know what was going to happen. Lynn
has become a little minor heart throb. I'm getting a
lot of emails about him from people about her voice.
So it's turned into something that you know, I had
a lot of angst over I worked so hard on
We all did, and you know, you put your baby
in the world and you just don't know. But I'm
(23:39):
so happy that we did it. And I think it's
life is just beginning. I mean, we have the play,
the stage reading that's coming up, and I just really
hope that not only Philadelphians but America really.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Embrace this story and just try to figure things out.
I mean, I think we need to talk about stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
I don't think it should always be the black people
that were always the victim. Sometimes it's a lot more
complicated than that, and I think this is very complicated.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I just want to make a note that you refer
to the May seventeenth stage reading of Move Marxist All,
which is at Temple, a play written by Mida Odin,
who is one of the journalists featured in the podcast,
and we'll have when we post this as a podcast,
we'll have all that information in the podcast description. But
(24:31):
for both of you as educators at Temple, what lessons
do you hope the next generation of journalists learns from
how the move story was covered and uncovered over time?
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Well, if I could just grab a quote from Jesse
Jackson that other people claim that it really wasn't his
quote but somebody else's. He says that texts without contexts
is pretexts, and as journalists, we need to provide that context.
And that's not something that is a new concept, because
providing context is a provision in a society professional journalists
(25:06):
Code of Ethics. For me, what I would hope that
the next generation and succeeding generations of journalists do is
do what we're supposed to do. Just do some hardcore reporting.
Get out in the street, you know, talk to people
and try to really unearth the facts and then connect
those facts to what's really going on.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yvon.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
One of the things I've learned myself personally from working
on this project is this podcast in this story is
also an example of war reporting.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I also think that reporters are really brave to we
run to things where other people are running the other way.
I think that we often get a bad reputation or
there's some sort of idea people have of who we are.
And I think this podcast is filled with our humanity,
and I think that that's a really important thing to see.
So many of the things Link says, he's just like
(26:02):
a guy, you know, trying to like do the job,
you know, and Made and Pete and Barbara and all
the reporters that are in here are just people just
doing the best they can. And it's really complicated when
you're covering a story about a community you feel like
you're part of, you know. But I think the humanity
comes out, and I think that's something I want young
(26:24):
reporters to look at, is their humanity and their empathy.
And I just think it's really important that we know
our history, especially at a time when it's not considered important.
I think doing work that is based on black history
is almost a subversive like come act, because it's not
(26:45):
something that I feel like our administration wants us to do.
But I think that this kind of is really important
to do right now, and to do it fairly and honestly,
warts and all. But I think it's really important that
we learn history. I think history is the roadmap for
the future, and so I want young journalists to look
(27:05):
at this and think about things like context and you know,
things that are sitting to suddenly appear when they were born.
You know, there's a reason why the world is like this,
but why the city is like this. And even in
looking at move and talking to mayor Good, I mean,
you see where we've gotten a lot better at certain things,
and you see like where we have some work to
do still. For me, that's like a gift that the
(27:29):
podcast can give. And I think it's a gift that
I was given by working with Lynn. To be honest,
I mean I learned. You know, you're never too old
to learn. I learned so much, and I know that
all the members of the team, I think I could
speak for everyone. I think we all learned so much.
That's more than anything. This is an educational tool.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah. For listeners who want to explore the series or
attend the many events that are associated with the podcast,
where can they find episodes, event details and follow updates.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
You can find the podcast wherever you get your podcast.
It's on Apple, Spotify, I mean those are sort of
the bigger platforms. Just Google you find it, or go
to your podcast app and you'll find it. The Inquirer
also is do an amazing job of pulling archival stories
written so if it's not if it's the bombing, they
(28:22):
have this whole all these stories about the bombing, about
the neighborhoods. You actually can listen to the podcast. You
can see the work of reporters like Lynn and Meida
and others that are featured. It's a really cool site.
We have our directed reading coming up on May seventeenth.
You can go to Templelogancenter dot org. The right in
(28:43):
the middle of the page is a link that'll take
you to the event. Right please register. It's going to
be at the Tomlinson Theater. And one of the coolest
things about this project is the director, Ontaria Kim Wilson,
was a ten year old child and saw the bomb
drop from her windows. Wow, our director, and she's an MFA.
(29:08):
She's just getting her MFA now from Temple. So it's
just an incredible project. And the play was written as
a form of healing from by Meta Odom who had
you know, PTSD because of this incident, because of what
she witnessed.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, thank you both for joining us today. Two powerful
voices in journalism and education. Yvonne Laddie, executive producer of
the new podcast Move Untangling the Tragedy and director of
the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Temple. And
Lynn Washington, veteran journalist and podcast host who's covered the
move story for more than fifty years.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Thank you both, beg you Breth.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
You can listen to all of today's interviews by going
to our station website and typing in keyword Community. You
can also listen on the iHeartRadio app yey Words Philadelphia
Community Podcast. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Lorraine Ballard.
I'm Lorraine Ballard Morrel and I stand for service to
our community and media that empowers. What will you stand for?
(30:09):
You've been listening to Insight and thank you.
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