The MOVE? exhibition in St. Louis is the subject of a newspaper article, “Art from A Political Perspective,“ by Jabari Asirn. “It deals with the 1985 incident in which Philadelphia police teamed with city officials to bomb a residence containing black citizens who were deemed ‘undesirable’ because of their membership in a politically active group known as MOVE.

“Picture a typical American living room, complete with appropriate family photos, knickknacks on doily-laden tables, comfortable armchairs, and a large color television. The feelings of warmth and serenity created by the room’s cozy confines are disrupted by a series of blaring television newscasts. Vivid scenes of war pour from the screen: an army of policemen firing an endless array of bullets, screams and shouts erupting amid uproarious confusion, entire city blocks blazing out of control while firemen stand idly by. . . . [Williams] has further augmented her tableau by covering the walls of the room with Xeroxed copies of relevant autopsy reports, and supplementing them with additional handwritten details.” Asim quotes Williams: “I got the material [the official body of evidence on the event] and used the Xerox machine as an imaging device. . . . My work forces people to take sides—you either love it or hate it. I’m not trying to proselytize my own viewpoint. It’s meant to inform” [St. Louis American 10–16 November 1988].

The violent confrontation on May 13, 1985, between the MOVE organization and the Philadelphia city government was widely publicized. The controversy centered around the police dropping a bomb on a row house. The consequences of this action left eleven MOVE members (five of them children) dead and sixty houses destroyed. It was the most controversial event in the city’s history It still remains a controversial subject.

I left Philadelphia in 1984. As a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, I was familiar with the longtime parallel history of the Philadelphia police and the MOVE organization.

MOVE members may be viewed as the ultimate “other” This group of black and white adults and children alienated white people by their integrated lifestyle, their custom of taking the surname of “Africa, “ and their revolutionary rhetoric. At the same time, MOVE was an affront to their working-class black neighborhood because of the members’ dreadlock hairstyles, their back-to-nature lifestyle, and their disregard for authority.

The Xeroxed Evidence. On the walls Williams places masses of Xeroxed pages from the report of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission. On the first and second walls are coroner’s reports and an eyewitness account by Birdie Africa, the nine-year-old boy who survived. On the third and fourth walls are the official police repoits; Williams comments that their “use of military time. ..tactical phrases and buzz words. ..gives insight into the aggressive stance of the police toward this group.“

The Video. This is an altered twenty-minute news broadcast. Based on a local TV station’s all-day news coverage of the event, “It is edited to retain all the ‘flash’ of THE NEWS, with its ‘updates,’ ‘team coverage,’ and ‘special reports.’

My version, however, removes most references to the MOVE members’ appearance and lifestyle. Instead it ‘reports’ with actual news footage the city sponsorship of this police action.

The Writing on the Wall. “This information is written with chalk directly on the walls. There are excerpts of MOVE speeches, writings and court testimonies. These are sometimes written in the flowery language of utopian rhetoric. Because of their references to ‘truth’ and family loyalty, these short paragraphs are handwritten so that, I hope, the viewer can hear the human inflection of a voice.”

Williams edits this work five times before feeling that it is finally right [“MOVE?” Center Quarterly 11:1990/1991].