Move

An American Religion

Bibliographic Data

ID20028837
AuthorsRichard Kent Evans (corresponding author)
Year2020
Pages300
Publication date2020-06-18
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueMOVE (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780190058777.001.0001
OpenAlexW4236774918
Open LibraryOL28266874M
ISBN9780190058777
LanguageEN
Citations received8

This book is a religious history of MOVE, a small, mostly African American religious group devoted to the religious teachings of John Africa that emerged in Philadelphia in the early 1970s. MOVE is perhaps best known for the MOVE Bombing. In 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department—working in concert with federal and state law enforcement—attacked a home that MOVE people shared in West Philadelphia, involving hundreds of police officers and firefighters and using tear gas, 10,000 rounds of ammunition, and improvised explosives. Most infamously, a police officer dropped a bomb containing C-4 explosives, which he had acquired from the FBI, from a helicopter onto the roof of the MOVE house. The bomb started a fire, which officials allowed to spread in hopes of burning MOVE people out of the house. Police officers fired upon MOVE people who tried to escape the flames. Eleven MOVE people died in the attack, including John Africa. Five of those who died were children. Based on never-before-seen law enforcement records and extensive archival and ethnographic research, MOVE: An American Religion reinterprets the history of MOVE from its origins in the late 1960s, its growth in the early 1970s, its conflicts with the United States government from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, and its presence today. It is the first full-length academic study of MOVE since 1994 and is the first book to consider MOVE as a religion

Criminology · Government (linguistics) · Law enforcement · Officer · Political science · Sociology · History · Law · Religion, Society, and Development · Religions

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