Museum finds remains from a victim of a notorious 1980s Philadelphia police bombing

PHILADELPHIA — Additional human remains from a 1985 police bombing on the headquarters of a Black liberation group in Philadelphia have been found at the University of Pennsylvania.

The remains are believed to be those of 12-year-old Delisha Africa, one of five children and six adults killed when police bombed the MOVE organization’s headquarters, causing a fire that spread to dozens of row homes. The violent confrontation, a rare bombing of American citizens by U.S. civilian authorities, led to lawsuits but no criminal charges against police or city officials.

The remains were discovered during a comprehensive inventory that the Penn Museum conducted to prepare thousands of artifacts, some dating back more than a century, to be moved into upgraded storage facilities.

MOVE members, led by founder John Africa, practiced a lifestyle that shunned modern conveniences, preached equal rights for animals and rejected government authority. The group clashed with police and many of their practices drew complaints from neighbors.

Police seeking to oust members from their headquarters used a helicopter to drop a bomb on the house on May 13, 1985. More than 60 homes in the neighborhood burned to the ground as emergency personnel were told to stand down.

A 1986 commission report called the decision to bomb an occupied row house “unconscionable.” MOVE survivors were awarded a $1.5 million judgment in a 1996 lawsuit.

City officials claimed at the time of the bombing that neighbors had filed complaints, saying there were issues with sanitation, vermin and noise at odd hours.

However, documents gathered by the commission and in the research into the bombing showed city officials, including the mayor, had designated the group as a terrorist organization. Group members maintained they had been targeted since a 1978 eviction attempt where a police officer was killed and called the complaints explanation a lie.

In 2021, university officials acknowledged that the school had retained bones from at least one bombing victim after helping with the forensic identification process in the wake of the bombing. A short time later, the city notified family members that there was a box of remains at the medical examiner’s office that had been kept after the autopsies were completed.

The museum said it's not known how the remains found this week were separated from the rest, and it immediately notified the child's family upon the discovery.

“We are committed to full transparency with respect to any new evidence that may emerge,” Penn Museum said in a statement on its website. "Confronting our institutional history requires ever-evolving examination of how we can uphold museum practices to the highest ethical standards. Centering human dignity and the wishes of descendant communities govern the current treatment of human remains in the Penn Museum’s care.”

Two lawyers who represent a man whose sister was killed in the bombing and who has sued the city over the mishandling of the remains said Thursday that Delisha Africa's remains turned up “despite repeated assurances” that all the remains from the bombing had been returned to the families.

“For nearly 40 years, the City of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Museum have refused to treat the MOVE Bombing victims or their families with the even most basic level of respect and decency and this latest revelation is just the most recent in a long line of atrocities Black folks in America have had to live with,” Bakari Sellers and Daniel Hartstein said in a statement. “We are disgusted and disappointed but, unfortunately, we are not surprised.”