It Looks Just Like a War Zone

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Members of the Osage block club voiced their concern to Goode about nine months ago. The mayor, members reported, said he would act in due time. Recalled Thomas: "He said that a baseball game has nine innings and we were in the seventh." Subsequently, club members could not reach Goode, and police ignored their complaints. Fed up at last, the club called a press conference to ventilate complaints and add to the pressure on the city. When the confrontation came, the club was on the verge of filing a suit to force action.

During the critical week that Goode weighed his options, he stayed in continual touch with Move through emissaries. The mayor said repeated efforts to negotiate an agreement failed. Actually, according to Bob Owens, a crisis- intervention worker, unsophisticated Move members are not really equipped to negotiate. Says Owens: "They don't really even understand the concept of negotiation. Their attitude was that of a child: we make our demands, and we stand on them." All hope of agreement ended Saturday when Move Spokesman Jerry Ford Africa sent the mayor an ominous message: "We are ready for you. Come and get us."

By then police had obtained warrants charging four occupants of the Move headquarters -- Frank James Africa, Conrad Hampton Africa, Ramona Africa and Theresa Brooks Africa -- with parole violation, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terroristic threats. To facilitate the execution of the warrants, authorities on Sunday cordoned off five blocks around the Move house and ordered the evacuation of 300 people by 10 that night. Last-ditch efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution were made Sunday by Bennie Swans, director of Philadelphia's Crisis Intervention Network. The Move group, he said, insisted they would cooperate with the authorities only after their nine comrades were released from prison. As the hours passed, the chances of an armed confrontation rose: it was common knowledge that Move had plenty of weapons and probably a store of explosives. The house at 6221 Osage was a veritable fort. Move members had dug a deep bunker in the basement; city sanitation workers obligingly hauled away the dirt. The cultists had lined the interior with the trunks of trees cut down by the city in nearby Cobbs Creek Park. Words that later seemed prophetic came blaring from the Move loudspeakers that night: "You're going to see something you've never seen before."

Around daybreak Monday, Police Commissioner Sambor deployed 150 men, including sharpshooters, bomb specialists and SWAT teams. At 5:35 a.m., Sambor roared through a bullhorn that he held arrest warrants for occupants of the house: they were given 15 min. to come out. When the deadline passed with no response but scornful taunts, police lobbed tear-gas canisters at the building and the fire department battered the roof of the house with two water cannons. A burst of gunfire came from the house, touching off a return fusillade of thousands of rounds from police lasting 90 min.

Wilson Goode heard the gunfire at his home a mile away. He and a group of advisers were tensely sipping coffee and orange juice while waiting for Leo Brooks, the field commander, to call from the scene. After the first shots came a lull, then more firing. Goode grew agitated and paced back and forth. "It sounds like machine-gun bullets," he said, and later, "What about the children?"