John Africa

not just for fellow African Americans, but for all life.

He gave himself a new name, John Africa, after the continent where many paleoanthropologists believe all human life began.

John Africa laid out a philosophy of life.

At its core was one belief.

The system, government, law, industry, was the root of all problems.

The word itself is not an acronym.

Originally the Christian Movement for Life, it was quickly shortened to simply MOVE.

At first, the group was made up mostly of John Africa's friends and family, but within a few years, it had grown to more than 50 members, and every one of them adopted the surname Africa.

Yep.

I know where John Africa and them went wrong.

I can fine-tune those things.

A lot of our movements have had, like, the flaws that get exploited by the establishment.

You can read their material, uh, movies, you know, it's, it's both a family and a religion.

So they have, you know, their texts, they have their guidelines, which is more or less like the teachings of John Africa.

But then they have a book that I think is now called 50 years on the move, which is their history.

which is, doesn't, doesn't necessarily abide by the same standards of, of, you know, a history book.

And I think something that I was trying to sort of communicate in the book is that the internal culture of move.

created a lot of problems for its own members, because in a lot of ways it was an organization struggling with the absence of like the greater black liberation movement.

You know, they come out of a period, John Africa comes out of a period where like the Panthers have been repressed.

You know, he has all his trauma from the Korean war.