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 1 (00:00):
Good morning. You're listening to a special edition of What's
Going On, a show about making a difference in our
lives and our communities. 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
(00:23):
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
(00:43):
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, survived and community leaders,
Move Untangling the Tragedy tells the story Philadelphia and the
(01:06):
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 Yvon. This podcast is 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 (01:25):
We had worked with the Inquirer before on a series
on sports as a solution to gun violence, and I'm
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 the Inquirer has not really embraced narrative podcasts
(01:49):
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 through the newspaper
record of Philadelphia, and they have a lot of reach
and a reach into diverse communities. And this podcast, more
(02:10):
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.
They've been really great to work with.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Lynn.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
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 a.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
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 only
(03:01):
from 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
(03:23):
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 (03:31):
Well. Ivan 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 (03:47):
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 lawyer and
maybe sort of who would be the main speakers for
each group, But you don't really dig in that deep.
(04:07):
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
(04:30):
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 Kival tape, really trying to strink together what
was going on on the ground level, talking to people
(04:52):
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 we're trying to do,
attempts that were made to sort of work with move,
attempts that were in mad 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
(05:14):
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
(05:35):
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 (06:00):
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 3 (06:18):
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
(06:40):
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 victimize as
(07:00):
it has tried 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 Covenant and
(07:21):
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 May thirteenth,
(07:43):
nineteen eighty five, but it's never been a tear. And
that tear came and I had to apologize to you Born.
You know, I'm a man. I'm supposed to have this,
you know, tough venear. 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 years. So as Yvonne said, this in many ways
(08:04):
is a collection of all the work that I've done
standing in front of the move compound and pouton 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 through a canyon.
(08:25):
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 (08:39):
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
(09:00):
reporter who was actually out on the 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,
(09:25):
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
(09:49):
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 (10:04):
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 stopin Forrisk,
Revisit or Resist, And that was the first time I
really started digging deep into Philadelphia's policing policies of the past,
(10:26):
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
(10:50):
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 throw 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
(11:11):
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
(11:34):
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. Yeah, where is DHS? Like, they're not
going to school, They're eating out of garbage cans. They
(11:54):
have extended stomachs because they're starving. They're eating raw potato
and row garlic and raw onion for food. And no one,
no system, goes in there and you got you know
that you're going to that. It's you're gonna evict these people.
You're gonna make these arrests. You don't care, nothing is
(12:15):
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 black people in terms
(12:37):
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 people who are homeowners, who
(12:58):
are striving for the American dream don't have to be
completely destroyed too. But instead no one seemed to care.
And that, I tell you, really it really breaks my heart.
It really really does.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah. 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
(13:35):
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
(13:56):
you think? How does it frame this story differently perhaps
than people have previously seen the story as well?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
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
(14:27):
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,
(14:48):
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. Stopped for a minute. He considered the
children combatants, thus no compassion for them. But the actual
(15:10):
police operational 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
(15:32):
houses owned 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. They are now seen as this
(15:55):
black revolutionary group in Perrin. Forget the fact that they
made war on black people, not only on O Sage
Avenue but also on Poleton 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 kinds of other things.
(16:17):
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 want to live? Would
(16:41):
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 to pass. He studied the
president so we could figure out how we can move
(17:04):
forward in a better way.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
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
(17:27):
us what you feel as though his feelings are currently
about that tragedy and how it impacted his own history,
his own story.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I've lived with this.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
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, and
this was this was one of them. It was really
an incredible thing to hear from him and hear what
(18:11):
he had to say in terms of basically his excuses
for not being there, for not stopping it. But I'll
let Lynn take it from there.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
That's just the one. 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
(18:43):
him is that 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 many asked for thirty minutes and
(19:05):
ninety minutes later, it's like, is your battery still work?
On your requarter? 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
(19:28):
we asked him about his reaction of what happened to
the residents of Osage Avenue in 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,
(19:49):
so you can 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
(20:11):
burn up. A 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
(20:33):
I'm not 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
(20:55):
live to see it? One of the things that that
fire burning and 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 were talking to the block captain
(21:19):
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 historical context, just shows that the
type of disregard that black people have received in this
(21:41):
country forever.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
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 (21:51):
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
(22:13):
who had experienced it and were just like wanting to
talk about what they saw, like almost as the 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
has been really positive. Some of the reporters who are
(22:33):
in the podcast. I was worried too, You're like, oh,
they might feel like I got to personal or something.
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
(22:57):
and want to learn more and want to understand. And
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 all the episodes so she
could binge it, and she was really upset and she
(23:19):
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 the boys,
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
(23:41):
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 embrace this
story and just try to figure things out. I mean,
I think we need to talk about stuff. I don't
think it should always be the black people that were
(24:04):
always the victim. Sometimes it's a lot more complicated than that.
I think this is very complicated.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I just want to make a note that you refer
to the May seventeenth stage reading of Move Marx's 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
(24:33):
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 3 (24:44):
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 text 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
(25:08):
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 (25:29):
Yvon.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
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 (25:39):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
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 the so many of the things Lynn says, he's
(26:03):
just like 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
(26:24):
want young 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,
(26:45):
because it's not 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. It's really
important that we learn from history. I think history is
the roadmap for the future. And so I want young
(27:06):
journalists to look at this and think about things like
context and you know, things that 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,
(27:28):
that's like a gift that the 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.
(27:50):
This is an educational tool.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
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 (28:04):
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
(28:24):
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
(28:45):
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 Ontari Kim Wilson
as a ten year old child and saw the bomb
drop from her windows. Oh my gosh, was Philip Wow
(29:08):
our director. And she's an MFA. 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 (29:27):
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. E
Lynn Washington, veteran journalist and podcast host who's covered the
move story for more than fifty years.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Thank you both, beg you.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
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 Keywords Philadelphia Community Podcast.
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Lorraine Ballard. I'm
Lorraine Ballard MOREL and I stand for service to our
community and media that empowers. What will you stand for?
(30:11):
You've been listening to what's going on, and thank you.
Good morning. You're listening to a special edition of What's
Going On, a show about making a difference in our
lives and our communities. 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
(00:23):
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
(00:43):
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, survived and community leaders,
Move Untangling the Tragedy tells the story Philadelphia and the
(01:06):
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 Yvon. This podcast is 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 (01:25):
We had worked with the Inquirer before on a series
on sports as a solution to gun violence, and I'm
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 the Inquirer has not really embraced narrative podcasts
(01:49):
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 through the newspaper
record of Philadelphia, and they have a lot of reach
and a reach into diverse communities. And this podcast, more
(02:10):
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.
They've been really great to work with.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Lynn.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
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 a.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
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 only
(03:01):
from 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
(03:23):
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 (03:31):
Well. Ivan 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 (03:47):
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 lawyer and
maybe sort of who would be the main speakers for
each group, But you don't really dig in that deep.
(04:07):
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
(04:30):
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 Kival tape, really trying to strink together what
was going on on the ground level, talking to people
(04:52):
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 we're trying to do,
attempts that were made to sort of work with move,
attempts that were in mad 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
(05:14):
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
(05:35):
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 (06:00):
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 3 (06:18):
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
(06:40):
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 victimize as
(07:00):
it has tried 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 Covenant and
(07:21):
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 May thirteenth,
(07:43):
nineteen eighty five, but it's never been a tear. And
that tear came and I had to apologize to you Born.
You know, I'm a man. I'm supposed to have this,
you know, tough venear. 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 years. So as Yvonne said, this in many ways
(08:04):
is a collection of all the work that I've done
standing in front of the move compound and pouton 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 through a canyon.
(08:25):
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 (08:39):
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
(09:00):
reporter who was actually out on the 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,
(09:25):
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
(09:49):
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 (10:04):
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 stopin Forrisk,
Revisit or Resist, And that was the first time I
really started digging deep into Philadelphia's policing policies of the past,
(10:26):
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
(10:50):
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 throw 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
(11:11):
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
(11:34):
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. Yeah, where is DHS? Like, they're not
going to school, They're eating out of garbage cans. They
(11:54):
have extended stomachs because they're starving. They're eating raw potato
and row garlic and raw onion for food. And no one,
no system, goes in there and you got you know
that you're going to that. It's you're gonna evict these people.
You're gonna make these arrests. You don't care, nothing is
(12:15):
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 black people in terms
(12:37):
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 people who are homeowners, who
(12:58):
are striving for the American dream don't have to be
completely destroyed too. But instead no one seemed to care.
And that, I tell you, really it really breaks my heart.
It really really does.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah. 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
(13:35):
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
(13:56):
you think? How does it frame this story differently perhaps
than people have previously seen the story as well?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
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
(14:27):
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,
(14:48):
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. Stopped for a minute. He considered the
children combatants, thus no compassion for them. But the actual
(15:10):
police operational 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
(15:32):
houses owned 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. They are now seen as this
(15:55):
black revolutionary group in Perrin. Forget the fact that they
made war on black people, not only on O Sage
Avenue but also on Poleton 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 kinds of other things.
(16:17):
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 want to live? Would
(16:41):
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 to pass. He studied the
president so we could figure out how we can move
(17:04):
forward in a better way.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
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
(17:27):
us what you feel as though his feelings are currently
about that tragedy and how it impacted his own history,
his own story.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
I've lived with this.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
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, and
this was this was one of them. It was really
an incredible thing to hear from him and hear what
(18:11):
he had to say in terms of basically his excuses
for not being there, for not stopping it. But I'll
let Lynn take it from there.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
That's just the one. 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
(18:43):
him is that 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 many asked for thirty minutes and
(19:05):
ninety minutes later, it's like, is your battery still work?
On your requarter? 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
(19:28):
we asked him about his reaction of what happened to
the residents of Osage Avenue in 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,
(19:49):
so you can 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
(20:11):
burn up. A 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
(20:33):
I'm not 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
(20:55):
live to see it? One of the things that that
fire burning and 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 were talking to the block captain
(21:19):
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 historical context, just shows that the
type of disregard that black people have received in this
(21:41):
country forever.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
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 (21:51):
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
(22:13):
who had experienced it and were just like wanting to
talk about what they saw, like almost as the 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
has been really positive. Some of the reporters who are
(22:33):
in the podcast. I was worried too, You're like, oh,
they might feel like I got to personal or something.
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
(22:57):
and want to learn more and want to understand. And
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 all the episodes so she
could binge it, and she was really upset and she
(23:19):
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 the boys,
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
(23:41):
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 embrace this
story and just try to figure things out. I mean,
I think we need to talk about stuff. I don't
think it should always be the black people that were
(24:04):
always the victim. Sometimes it's a lot more complicated than that.
I think this is very complicated.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I just want to make a note that you refer
to the May seventeenth stage reading of Move Marx's 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
(24:33):
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 3 (24:44):
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 text 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
(25:08):
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 (25:29):
Yvon.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
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 (25:39):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
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 the so many of the things Lynn says, he's
(26:03):
just like 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
(26:24):
want young 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,
(26:45):
because it's not 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. It's really
important that we learn from history. I think history is
the roadmap for the future. And so I want young
(27:06):
journalists to look at this and think about things like
context and you know, things that 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,
(27:28):
that's like a gift that the 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.
(27:50):
This is an educational tool.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
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 (28:04):
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
(28:24):
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
(28:45):
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 Ontari Kim Wilson
as a ten year old child and saw the bomb
drop from her windows. Oh my gosh, was Philip Wow
(29:08):
our director. And she's an MFA. 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 (29:27):
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. E
Lynn Washington, veteran journalist and podcast host who's covered the
move story for more than fifty years.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Thank you both, beg you.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
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 Keywords Philadelphia Community Podcast.
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Lorraine Ballard. I'm
Lorraine Ballard MOREL and I stand for service to our
community and media that empowers. What will you stand for?
(30:11):
You've been listening to what's going on, and thank you.
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