Phoenix, Pennsylvania–Eddie Africa, 69, was freed from a Pennsylvania jail this week after spending 40 years in prison. He was one of nine members of the anti-police brutality organization MOVE arrested in 1978 for death of a police officer.
According to Democracy Now! Janine Phillips Africa and Janet Holloway Africa were released last month. Husband and wife Mike Africa Sr. and Debbie Africa were both released last year.
Two members of the group remain behind bars and two other members died in prison.
Their arrest came after the Philadelphia police raided dropped a bomb, yes a BOMB, on their apartment complex.
The Guardian writes:
Eddie Africa’s decades in prison were the product of a running battle between Philadelphia’s notoriously brutal police force and the Move organization. Move was a hybrid group that combined black liberation radicalism with a form of early environmentalism, each of its members taking the last name Africa to denote that they regarded themselves as one family.
The group was water cannoned, attacked with armored vehicles, bulldozed and ultimately bombed from the air. The Move 9 were arrested on 8 August 1978, following a long siege of their collective home in Philadelphia.
When a gunfight broke out, a police officer, James Ramp, was shot and killed with a single bullet. Yet all nine Move members, including four women, one of whom was heavily pregnant, were held collectively responsible, convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years to life.
