ON A MOVE

An insider’s account of the Black communal movement that drew the ire—and the firebombs—of the Philadelphia police.

Vincent Lopez Leaphart (1931-1985), known to all as Benny, returned from the Korean War with the hard-won belief that the lives of people of color were worthless in the eyes of the white generals and politicians in charge. Ahead of his time, he propounded a vegetarian diet, promoted animal rights, and formulated a doctrine of self-sufficiency, writing a vast tome called The Analytical Book of Life, to which he applied the pen name John Africa—not a person, he insisted, but an idea. He was idiosyncratic but firm in his beliefs, including his resolute irreligion: “You don’t see whales praying to a fucking book. You don’t see tigers going to no church. Only people.” Others joined his cause, taking the name Africa and living communally, raising children jointly. Africa Jr. was one such child, born to an imprisoned mother who, along with his father, would serve more than 40 years before his release. Just so, Benny was always in legal trouble for his views. “Benny felt that as the Native Americans had their land stolen by the white man, so was water stolen from the people,” writes the author. “He rerouted the water pipes in the house to bypass the meter and stopped paying the water bill.” Throughout the book, Africa Jr. never shies away from criticism. “Honestly, I think MOVE, in some ways, was cultish,” he writes. “But so is Christianity, so is Buddhism, so is Judaism, and so are all the rest of the organized religions.” Now the director of MOVE, headquartered in the neighborhood infamously bombed by the police in 1985, Africa Jr. foresees a revival of the activism of old.

A memorable portrait of a little-understood movement and its founders.