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They came to MOVE not out of any conscious decision, but because they
were born there, or because they were brought there by their parents in
their earliest years. John Africa referred to them as the “Seeds of
Wisdom” as they were to be raised as pure examples of his anti-
establishment teachings.
To the MOVE Organization, these are not children. Instead, they are tiny
soldiers in John Africa’s revolutionary war on society. They have played a
major role in every major and minor “confrontation” that MOVE has had
with authorities, and in 1985 five of them would lose their lives.
While MOVE, itself, has changed over the years, the role of children within
the group remains largely the same as it has always been. Education for
the average MOVE child is almost non-existent. For pre-teen girls within
the group, childhood ends at around 11 or 12 years old, and motherhood
begins.
In order to understand what life is like to be raised within the confines of
the MOVE sect, one need only to consider the testimony of the only child
to escape the MOVE initiated catastrophe on Osage Avenue. He was
called at the time “Birdy Africa” and his story paints a grim picture of life
within MOVE.
After his escape from MOVE and the inferno of MOVE’s headquarters,
the then 13 year old Birdy, who’s name was changed to Michael Ward,
would be interviewed by the MOVE Commission Chairman William H.
Brown ;
“What kind of games would you play?"
"None."
"Did you ever play, like, football or baseball or soccer or anything like
that?"
Ward shook his head no.
Like children everywhere, MOVE children learned to find a way around the
adult rules. Chocolate and french fries were stolen. Bikes, according to
young Ward, were "snuck" when the children visited the MOVE house in
Chester that was owned by Mo Africa.
Sometimes the rule breakers were caught. They were not spanked,
though. MOVE believed in a psychological approach.
"Did the adults have a meeting with the children who were caught" eating
cooked food?" Brown asked Ward.
Ward said yes.
"What happened at those meetings?" Brown asked.
"They would just get on the person who started it," Ward said. ''
. . They would say it was wrong and holler at him."
"And . . . what would the children do?" Brown asked. "Cry," Ward said.
Brown wondered if the young Ward had ever thought about leaving MOVE.
"Yes," Ward said, " . . . a long time ago."
"Why did you want to leave MOVE?" Brown asked.
"Because you couldn't do what the other kids do. . . . Play with toys and
stuff and ride bikes and watch TV."
Ward said that the children "told each other" about their wishes to leave,
but it was not thinkable that they would tell the adults. If they did, Ward
said, "we would have had a meeting on it."
"And by that you mean you would have been hollered at for wanting to
leave?" Brown asked.
"Yes," Ward said.
Another former MOVE member who would speak out about the plight of
children within the MOVE sect would be a woman named Valerie Janet
Brown.
Brown had been one of the groups earliest members and had even been
placed in charge of a “MOVE Chapter” in Richmond, Virginia. In 1981
she had grown tired of the rats, the "meetings", and isolation of cult life
and bundled up her two young daughters and left MOVE to begin a new
life. Not long after the MOVE confrontation on Osage Avenue, she
stepped forward to speak out about the cult that she had been a part of for
so long.
She would tell a reporter that in MOVE, the children were the key to
everything. They were to be the first pure generation of MOVE, raised on
raw fruits of the earth, uncomplicated by technology, and unburdened by
an education system that discounted their natural instincts.
But behind the holistic rhetoric of MOVE’s teachings, there was an
ominous reality that lurked beneath the surface of MOVE's utopian
enterprise.
Brown would claim that John Africa had indicated to police in 1976, that if
the authorities tried to storm the Powelton Village house, MOVE would kill
all the children inside.
"I believe he would have done it," Brown said. "I don't know that everybody
would have done it at his command."
In March of that year, there was a scuffle between police and MOVE
members in Powelton Village. Later that day, Phil and Jeanine Africa
contended that a policeman had shoved Janine, who was carrying her 3-
week-old child.
Janine said she fell to the ground on top of the infant, that a policeman
then stepped on her and that the child died as a result.
MOVE accused the police of murder. The police questioned whether a
child had actually died.
Asked about that incident, Brown said, "That's not the way the child died.
It's not that there was any kind of homicide. The child died of natural
causes that might not have occurred had MOVE believed in modern
medicine, and they used it for political purposes against the police.
Propaganda."
In the late 1970's, Brown and another MOVE member were dispatched to
Richmond, Virginia with MOVE money and MOVE children to set up a
new chapter of MOVE. It, like the MOVE children, was called the “Seed of
Wisdom.”
In 1980, just as MOVE members were going on trial in Philadelphia in
connection with the 1978 Powelton Village shootout, Richmond police
raided the Seed of Wisdom house.
They took away Brown, Sims, and 14 children. Brown and Sims were
charged with neglect because the children were not enrolled in school and
were not being given what officials called "a proper diet."
The 14 children - some of whose parents were on trial in Philadelphia and
who ranged in age from about 7 months to 9 years - were placed in city
custody.
After the children were in custody a month, a Richmond judge returned the
children to Sims and Brown, saying there was no evidence that the lives or
health of the children were in immediate danger..
In May 1980, a judge ruled that Sims and Brown had neglected the
children. He delayed placing the children in the city's custody while Brown
and Sims sought to appeal the decision . The judge also ordered the
women not to leave the state.
Brown and Sims, meanwhile, received word from MOVE that they would
have to return to Philadelphia in defiance of the court order.
In the fall of 1980, a huge U-Haul truck pulled in front of the Seed of
Wisdom house and quickly packed the children up inside and drove them
to the MOVE compound on Osage Avenue. It was the house where some
of these children would lose their lives.
Today, the lives of the children of MOVE have changed, but only in
superficial ways. Although the are now allowed birthday parties, video
games, movies, t.v., bicycles, more cooked food, etc...they still live under
the complete control of MOVE’s leaders. For the most part, education
does not exist for the children and they are largely functionally illiterate.
Girls in the Organization as young as twelve are married to older MOVE
members and begin having children at that same time. These children do
not receive pre-natal care and are expected to give birth to their babies at
home without the aid of doctor or mid-wife. After delivering these new
MOVE members, the young mothers must sever the umbilical cord with
their teeth and than lick the afterbirth off the baby without the aid of water
or other “systematic” methods.
