One of the notable aspects of the Philadelphia Zoo (the Zoological Society of Philadelphia) archives in Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center, is its rich photographic materials, which include approximately 200 lantern slides dating from 1880 to 1936, used to help educate and advance the mission of the Zoo. Some of these slides were featured in a presentation at the Wagner Free Institute’s Annual Lantern Slide Salon, on October 13, 2016.
Old Gorilla Cage, circa 1920
The earliest lantern slides depict the nineteenth-century Zoo, its buildings, grounds, and animal attractions, while the slides from the 1930s document both scientific advancement and a push for change in animal housing. Breeding and collecting remained in the forefront, great strides were made in nutrition, and the iron-barred cages of the nineteenth century began to disappear, as new, natural, open-air habitats were constructed.
Making “zoocakes” in the commissary, circa 1935
Later slides document the Zoo’s Penrose Research Laboratory which made early strides in the study and prevention of diseases effecting animals in captivity, and the lab’s pioneering work in nutrition. The Zoo discovered that disease, early mortality, and low fertility affecting the animals was directly linked to nutritional deficiency. To combat this, the Penrose Lab developed the Philadelphia Zoocake, which was “a mineral and vitamin rich concoction…” formulated from corn meal, ground meat, ground vegetables, eggs, fat, molasses, salt, and baking powder. By 1936, the Zoo tested its new dietary program, including the zoocake, and saw dramatically increased general health. Greater fertility and diminished mortality rates were also noted. In fact, some of the animals went on to break records in terms of longevity in captivity.
Unloading groceries with orangutan, circa 1935New Beaver Pond, constructed by the WPA, 1935
In addition to the strides in nutrition, labor provided by Depression-era federal work relief programs kept things moving forward in other areas. In the 1930s, workers for the Works Progress Administration repaired the buildings and grounds, helping to advance how the Zoo housed and exhibited animals. Where barred cages and cell-like enclosures were the norm for the nineteenth century zoo, the twentieth century zoo sought to remove the bars and to create habitats that resembled the animals’ natural environments. This offered better living space for the animals and more thrilling exhibitions for visitors.
View of Monkey Island, constructed by the WPA, 1935
In 1936, the Citizens Committee for a Free and Modern Zoo was formed to ascertain public interest in the Zoo and campaign for public funding to make the Zoo a free attraction and finance continued improvements. The committee used images from other zoos’ more modern animal exhibits to excite the public about the proposed changes at the Philadelphia Zoo. Such images were coupled with pictures of caged animals under tag line, “Iron Bars a Prison Make,” to underscore the need for this important change in zoo-keeping practices. While the ground work was laid in the 1930s, it wasn’t until after World War II that the city answered the call and appropriated one million dollars to help the Zoo realize its vision.
— Courtney Smerz, SCRC Collection Management Archivist
On August 13, 1957, William and Daisy Myers and their three children, an African American family, moved into the all-white community of Levittown, Pennsylvania, and shortly thereafter found themselves confronted by angry residents displeased with their arrival. Large crowds gathered during the day and hurled insults towards the home, while at night, cars drove by flashing their lights and honking their horns. The situation escalated over the course of eight days, with rocks being thrown through the windows of the Myers’ home and another stone knocking a local police officer unconscious. In response, the Pennsylvania State Police were sent to Levittown to restore order, where they would remain for nearly two months before a semblance of calm returned.
Crowd protests first black family moving into Levittown, August 17, 1957, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photograph Collection
The events in Levittown attracted the attention of the national press and a wide range of civic and religious organizations that shared a common mission to combat prejudice and discrimination. One of these organizations was Philadelphia’s Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), which frequently worked to promote fairness and equal opportunity in housing for African Americans throughout Philadelphia. The JCRC would not take a direct role in events taking place in Levittown, but correspondence between JCRC executive director Maurice Fagan, and several other regional Jewish organizations, demonstrates the level of interest they shared. On October 18, Stephen Remsen, the director of the Philadelphia based Jewish Labor Committee, wrote to Fagan saying, “The pressures of time and the fact that my Levittown file is at home preparing itself for some more speeches to everybody and his brother make it difficult for me to do justice to your request.”
The apparent request was for an account of the role of Levittown’s Jews in response to the unrest. The letter praises the activities of the local Jewish Community Council, which worked in cooperation with Protestant and Quaker groups to actively support the rights of the Myers. Remsen notes that there were some “individual” Jews who were either neutral or opposed to the racial integration of their community, yet also stresses that he could find no evidence that any Jew took part in any of the protests or acts of mob violence. Perhaps the most interesting comments in the letter come when Remsen expresses concern to Fagan about the way Jews are sometimes perceived and how this could influence events in Levittown.
Remsen writes: “If there was any problem, it was the identification of the Myers move-in as a Negro-Jewish-Quaker movement and cause. While the Rabbi and all the others of Jewish faith who were in this fight tried to remain in the background, it was impossible to do this. I am convinced that the enemy – smelling one Jew in the community – would have played the anti-Semitic game even if that one Jew did nothing but study the Torah.”
Letter to JCRC executive director Maurice Fagan, October 18, 1957
Fred Grossman, director of the regional Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, also wrote to Fagan on October 18 about his assessment of events in Levittown. Grossman describes some of the harassment endured by the Myers family and their supporters over the previous weeks and similarly lauds the work of Jewish groups, despite, “reports of anti-Semitic comments and instances of hostility from non-Jewish neighbors previously friendly or at least indifferent.” Grossman also makes it clear that Jewish support for racial integration was not universal, and, in terms that are a bit more stark than Remsen’s, says that, “Although there are many Jews who are strongly opposed to integration and who resent the Myers, few if any of these agree with the violence or the attrition techniques aimed at driving the Myers out.”
Following these letters, Fagan submitted a report on October 23, 1957, to the JCRC board of directors that outlined what he saw as four key reasons why Jews had a stake in Levittown: “(1) the family which sold the home [to Myers] is Jewish; (2) the friendly family next door is Jewish; (3) organized Jewish groups and synagogues were called upon to make a public stand; and (4) Levitt of Levittown is Jewish.”
“The Levittown Problem and the Jewish Community” report, October 23, 1957
A local group, the Levittown Citizens Committee, took the lead in organizing support for the Myers and appealing for peace in their community. Comprised of Levittown residents, as well as local rabbis, Protestant ministers, and members of the Society of Friends, the group lent direct support to the embattled Myers and campaigned against the racism on their streets. Before it was over, the Myers and their friends would endure numerous forms of intimidation, including the burning of several crosses and the painting of “KKK” on the home of Myers’ Jewish neighbor. For several weeks, a vacant house situated next to the Myers’ home was occupied by members of the Levittown Betterment Committee–a hastily organized group that wanted to preserve Levittown’s whiteness. This vacant house was used as a rallying point for the demonstrators, which featured a Confederate flag flying above and the loud broadcast of songs, such as “Old Man River” and “Dixie.”
Eventually, William and Daisy Myers appealed to the Pennsylvania State Attorney General and charges were filed against members of the Levittown Betterment Committee, followed by a court ordered injunction issued on October 23, 1957–the same day as Fagan’s report. Records show that the JCRC was ready to lend aid if called upon, but no such request came from Levittown’s Jewish community, which had no formal relationship with their organization. The JCRC’s board of directors issued formal resolutions of commendation to both the Levittown Citizens Committee and the Levittown Jewish Community Council on December 20, 1957. Their commendation to the Levittown Jewish Community Council read, in part:
“The Philadelphia Jewish Community Relations Council notes with pride and gratification the courage, dignity and integrity with which the Jewish Community of Levittown, in the main under the leadership of the Levittown Jewish Community Council, expressed its regard for human dignity and democracy when the Myers family was threatened by mob harassment and violence.”
Letter to Levittown Jewish Community Council, December 20, 195
The events that took place in Levittown, Pennsylvania, are a small chapter in the larger story of American’s struggle over civil rights, but in many ways it represents themes that would reverberate in numerous communities across the country. While not all Jews took up the fight against segregation, in many cases American Jews could be found either on the front lines or working to support the efforts of those who were.
Additional photographs of crowds protesting the Meyers’ family move to Levittown, PA, can be found in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin photograph collection.
To learn more about the Levittown communities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, see Suzanne Lashner Dadyanim’s essay on The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia’s website.
–Kenneth Cleary, Project Archivist, Philadelphia Jewish Archives Collection, SCRC
This is the first post of an occasional series highlighting the work of Philadelphia’s Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). The records of the JCRC, housed in Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center, are currently being processed and will be available for research in early 2018.
In Fall 2015, the Special Collections Research Center partnered with Richard Orodenker and his Intellectual Heritage class to exhibit commonplace books created by the students alongside examples of commonplace books and related materials from the SCRC. This year, we are happy to continue our faculty and student exhibit collaborations with an exciting display of poetry and prose chapbooks created by students in Kathryn Ioanata’s Honors Creative Acts class.
–by student Keri Klinges
The term chapbook is used to describe the printed literature of two distinct moments in the history of printing in the West. In Europe in the early modern period, a chapbook referred to the cheaply printed and simply illustrated popular literature distributed widely and often sold by travelling booksellers called chapmen. These pamphlets contained abbreviated texts, such as fairy and folk tales, ballads, histories, or moral tracts. In the modern context, chapbooks refer to publications of shorter length, 40-50 pages or less, that are simply bound. They often contain either poetry or prose on a single theme or subject.
During the Spring 2016 semester, Professor Ioanata brought her Honors Creative Acts (ENG 926) students to the SCRC to see a selection of modern chapbooks from our various print collections, including the Contemporary Culture Collection and the Rachel Blau DuPlessis collection. Professor Ionata describes the connection between the visit and the students’ final projects: “This assignment asked students to take their best writing from the semester, revise it, and arrange it artfully into a chapbook. In working on this project, rather than a simple portfolio of work typed on plain paper and stapled together, it became necessary for students to consider the book as a work of art. Using the chapbooks in the Special Collections Research Center as an example, I encouraged students to think about not only their writing itself, but its placement on the page, in the book, and the aesthetics of the book itself.”
Student Nick Stanovick with Professor Kathryn Ionata
Special collections and archival materials are regularly used by students as inspiration for their own creative endeavors. Featuring these student projects in our library exhibits demonstrates the impact that the Libraries’ resources and instructional outreach can have on student success. The exhibit process also creates opportunities for faculty, student, and staff collaboration. Professor Ionata and Nick Stanovick, a student in the class, both participated in the selection of materials for the exhibit, including determining which page(s) of each chapbook would be featured.
Many of the chapbooks created by the students, featuring their own prose and poetry writing, and a selection of chapbooks from the SCRC will be on display on the first floor of Paley Library in the main lobby throughout the fall semester.
Cervantes portrait from Cervantes, Miguel de. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha. London: J. and R. Tonson, 1738.
This year, 2016, marks the 400th anniversary of Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes’s death, and worldwide celebrations of his life and work abound. On Monday, September 26, 2016, at noon in Paley Library Lecture Hall, Temple University Libraries’ is co-sponsoring a lecture by William Egginton, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, with Temple’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Dr. Egginton will be speaking about Miguel de Cervantes and how his Don Quixote radically changed the nature of literature and created a new way of viewing the world. Egginton recently published The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World. (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2016).
To quote from the publisher’s description of Egginton’s book: “… Don Quixote went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a bestseller…. He invented a way of writing. This book is about how Cervantes came to create what we now call fiction, and how fiction changed the world. The Man Who Invented Fiction explores Cervantes’s life and the world he lived in, showing how his influences converged in his work, and how his work–especially Don Quixote–radically changed the nature of literature and created a new way of viewing the world. Finally, it explains how that worldview went on to infiltrate art, politics, and science, and how the world today would be unimaginable without it.”
Don Quixote from: Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote de La Mancha. Illustrated by Tony Johannot. London: J.J. Dubochet & Co., 1838.
This semester the Libraries’ is also featuring a mini-exhibit of illustrated editions of Cervantes’s works, published between the 17th and 20th centuries, held by the Special Collections Research Center. This exhibit, on Paley Library’s mezzanine, includes a true gem in the printing history of Don Quixote, the first edition of the work published in England in Spanish. This London edition, printed by J. and R. Tonson in 1738, features over sixty copperplate engravings and includes the first known portrait of Cervantes, based on the author’s own self-description. Other highlights include a 19th century edition with the dramatic depictions of the tale by French illustrator Gustave Doré and more abstract 20th century interpretations of the hero and his world.
Special thanks go to Dr. José M. Pereiro Otero, Associate Professor in Temple’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, for providing the narrative for the display.
The originals of all of the books featured in the exhibit will be on display in the SCRC’s Reading Room on the ground floor of Paley library after the Dr. Egginton’s noon lecture on Monday, September 26. The lecture, and the reception and open house following, all are free and open to the public.
–Kimberly Tully, curator of rare books, Special Collections Research Center
As another semester begins at Temple University, we’d like to remind you about the range of instruction services provided by Temple’s Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and introduce a new tool for requesting a class instruction session with us.
A primary mission of the SCRC is to provide or support instruction for students at Temple University and other area institutions. We are always delighted to expose students to the rare books, archives, manuscripts, photographs, film and digital media that make up our holdings. In the past year the SCRC hosted 66 instruction sessions in a range of disciplines, including History, English, Geography and Urban Studies, Art, Architecture, Intellectual Heritage, Social Work, Education, Film and Media Arts, Journalism, and Criminal Justice.
SCRC staff offer instruction in a variety of formats, including research orientations and specialized sessions that incorporate course- or assignment-based resources and activities. These sessions are geared toward engaging with primary source materials and teaching students primary source and archival literacy, as well as enhancing research, critical thinking, and writing skills. Over the course of the semester, students often make return visits to the reading room to conduct their own research and put into practice what they learned during their instruction session.
If you’re a Temple Faculty member, or an instructor from any institution from middle school to college, and you are interested in arranging an instruction session at the SCRC please use our new Instruction Session/Visit Request Form. We’ll work with you to tailor the session to your course’s subject matter and learning objectives. You can direct any questions regarding class visits to Josué Hurtado, Coordinator of Public Services & Outreach, or to SCRC@temple.edu.
The task of acclimating to a new environment can be daunting for anyone relocating or settling in a new city or country. In addition to establishing a home, finding work, accessing health care and other services, and possibly learning a new language, developing friendships is an important part of feeling connected to a new community. In an increasingly technologically-dependent world, social networking tools and friend finder apps like Wiith, Hey! VINA, LykeMe, and Meetup can make easy work of connecting to like-minded individuals with similar interests. The challenges associated with establishing a social network in an unfamiliar place are certainly not new.
Recently, while processing and cataloging the records of the Philadelphia based social service agency Jewish Family Service held in the Special Collections Research Center, I discovered a card file containing profiles of WWII refugees. The profile cards were created by the Philadelphia Refugee Resettlement Committee, a committee established in February 1937 by the Jewish Welfare Society (later renamed the Jewish Family Service) to support the economic and social adjustment of individuals and families displaced by the war.
The Refugee Resettlement Committee saw one of the most basic social skills—the ability to make friends—as a necessity for the positive adjustment of refugees arriving in Philadelphia. To aid this process, the committee created a service staffed by volunteer “friendly visitors.” The committee would interview these “new Americans” after their arrival, creating a profile card summarizing the individual or family’s background and social preferences. Volunteers were then matched with refugees based on shared interests in the hopes of fostering a friendship.
Lauer family profile card, 1939
Max and Fridericka Lauer and their two sons were just one of the many families who were matched with Refugee Resettlement Committee volunteers between 1938 and 1941. The Lauers’ profile card indicates the eldest son, Lothar, immigrated to Philadelphia in September 1938 and enrolled as a student at Temple University prior to his family’s arrival in March the next year. Described as a cultured family, the following excerpt from the Lauers’ profile provides some insight into the challenges they faced in creating a social network on their own:
“Mr. and Mrs. Lauer have always been interested in music, the theatre, the opera–but have been unable to partake of these activities in this country because of a financial inability, and a lack of friends with whom to share these interests. Mrs. Lauer is also interested in bridge but states that the women she has met in her neighborhood are old Jewish women whose sole interest is the house, thus giving her very little in common with them. Mrs. Lauer does not speak English at all, Dr. Lauer speaks quite poorly. It would therefore be necessary to find a German-speaking volunteer for this family.”
From An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft…. London: Printed for R. Knaplock and D. Midwinter, 1718 This illustration is “Matthew Hopkins Witchfinder general,” a 1793 reproduction of a well-known 1647 woodcut. The image was inserted as a frontispiece in the book after its publication.
Philip Gardiner Nordell (1894-1976), graduated from Dartmouth College in 1916, where he was an All-American in the running broad jump. He claimed to have invented the predecessor to boxed cake mixes in the 1920s—founding a business that combined the dry ingredients for muffins, allowing the baker to simply add water. Nordell’s primary research interest was early American lotteries, which he studied for over thirty years. His personal collection of early lottery tickets and related newspaper announcements, brochures, and broadsides, is now at Princeton University.
Nordell also assembled an extraordinary collection of books documenting religion, politics, and science in Britain and New England in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Temple Special Collections acquired this collection from Nordell in 1965. It contains more than 250 books, including a significant number of rare British and American imprints on religion from the 17th and 18th centuries. The collection documents the predominant and often conflicting ideas during this period, particularly related to religion, religious liberty, and rationalism in England and the New England colonies. Included in the collection are many books on “fringe” groups, such as Anabaptists, Levellers, Ranters, and atheists, as well as many works on witchcraft. Authors represented include Francis Bacon, John Cotton, Thomas Edwards, Joseph Glanvill, Thomas Hobbes, John Lilburne, Cotton Mather, and William Prynne.
Of particular interest are the books on witchcraft which represent a very comprehensive view of the topic. Originating on both sides of the Atlantic, they document the conversation that old and new worlds were having about sources, causes, and cures for witchcraft–and the eventual repudiation of the belief that witches exist.
In a 1965 letter, Nordell said: “My central aim in gathering the collection has been to furnish important source material helpful in appraising the comparative mental patterns in old and New England.… In different words, the collection furnishes much of the basic source material to form a sound judgment as to the truth of an observation made in the 1640′s, that while New England was becoming old, old England was becoming new.”
–Margery Sly, Director of Special Collections, and Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, Special Collections Research Center
In February 2016, as a part of The Free Library’s One Book, One Philadelphia program, Temple University Libraries’ Book Club read Cold Mountain. In this epic novel, author Charles Frazier details the love story of Ada and Inman, southerners, and their respective journeys to survive the Civil War and reunite with each other.
Reading Cold Mountain piqued my interest in the Civil War. It turns out we have a few Civil War collections right here in the Special Collections Research Center. My favorite one is a collection of seventeen letters written by Morris Manderbach, of Berks County, Pennsylvania, to his mother. Writing home whenever he could, Morris chronicled his experiences in the Union Army, seemingly without censorship, from February to November 1864.
The letters provide a glimpse into the harsh realities of war in a very personal way–different than that garnered from our small collection of United States Army Medical Records. Morris’s letters also show how the fictionalized account of Inman in Cold Mountain is realistic in many ways–his character and reminiscences of battles could easily have been drawn, at least in part, from Morris’ reflections of his experience in the war. Both Morris and the fictional Inman are documented in the areas near Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, during the summer of 1864, where several important battles were fought, including the Battle of Cold Harbor and the Battle of the Crater.
As a drummer, Morris did not fight, although he endured the dangers, hardships, and sorrows of the battlefield like any other soldier. Several of his letters include graphic descriptions of skirmishes with Confederate troops, peppered with horrific descriptions of injuries. While he never outright mentions his fear or frustration, it comes through in his retelling of events. On June 4, 1864, he writes, “…I went out to the Reg’t with rations because they had nothing to eat for two days…. it was about ten miles to where they were we had an awful time to find them and at last we found them and when we found them the bullets came so fast we could hardly get to them…”.
In addition to descriptions of battle, he expressed genuine sorrow over the sick, injured, and dead, some of whom he knew well from back home:
“…They are many wounded out of our com[mand] but you don’t know them. Peter [illegible] is wounded in the head and Abraham Hackman is shot dead. I am very sorry I cried more than I can’t tell what Tell grand mother and all the rest as soon as you can It is an awful sight to see these wounded Some die so happy That [is] what makes me cry they sing so nice and [illegible] there was two capts that I seen die yesterday that died very happy, they looked so nice and smiled there were manny there that cried…”. (June 4, 1864)
Manderbach journal, page 8
The diversity of Morris’s experience and the ebb and flow of emotions reflected in his letters are compelling. On July 24, after a very long, detailed passage about his new job cooking for the captain and lieutenants, which afforded him many appreciated luxuries, Morris’ mood changes as he explains, “…we have everything like home only it aint home that’s all the difference I spose this cruel war will soon be over.” He then goes to share that his best friend died. “Dear mother I have lost my dear and best school companion ever I had we miss him very much out here he was true and brave to his country I hope he died happy.”
Morris’s devotion to and need for his mother and news from home is perhaps the most telling part of his story. It is particularly evident in his final letters. In the weeks leading up to his death, he described his suffering in detail and looked for comfort from his mother. On October 26, he wrote from the hospital, “I now seat myself for a few moments to let you know that I aint well for about three weeks…. If you could please send me some thick licorice of the best kind for tea…”. Then, on November 10, in his last letter, “…I am alive but not well I have been very sick and can not help myself…”. He again requests licorice for tea and also a photograph, “I want you to send me your likeness for I want to see how you look…”.
I was sad to learn from a Civil War genealogy site that Morris died a few days later, on November 14 in the hospital at Point of Rocks, Virginia, after a prolonged, but unidentified illness.
If you would like to see the Morris Manderbach Letters you may do so by contacting the SCRC. To learn more about our Civil War and other military holdings, use our new Research Guide on Military History. This guide made it easy for me to identify and explore our Civil War related collections.
The class visited SCRC several times for introductions to using special collections materials and various collections, students returned individually to conduct research on their own. They each selected two zines from the collection and wrote an essay on themes found within them, and completed a timeline and report on an event in Philadelphia LGBTQ history using LGBTQ resources available in the SCRC and the John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT Archives.
Worksheet used by students for the metadata assignment.
During one visit, the students were given an introduction to metadata by SCRC staff, and completed an assignment to create their own metadata for a zine in the SCRC collection. The class included an explanation of what metadata is and does, both generally and in a library; what makes metadata important; and some issues related to creating metadata.
The issues discussed were directly relevant to the purpose of the course, including how metadata is inherently about the problematic act of applying labels to things; standardized metadata requires the use of terms determined by someone with their own biases; and applying labels to information resources puts the metadata creator in a position of power and authority. Issues related specifically to zines were also discussed, including how they’re often about sensitive, personal topics; they are frequently created by people from underrepresented groups; and they are occasionally written by people who do not want to be identified.
Class handout on metadata.
The students then completed an assignment to create their own metadata. They selected one zine from the collection, and completed a metadata form based on the ZineCore elements. SCRC staff and Dr. Shaw answered questions about how to describe a zine with, for example, no author or title; what to do if a zine listed no author but the student knew the name of the author; and how to come up with subject descriptions for sensitive topics.
One of the most notorious and controversial episodes in Philadelphia’s history occurred on May 13, 1985: the bombing of the MOVE Organization’s house in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of West Philadelphia.
MOVE members watch another member surrender to Philadelphia police. May 4, 1978
After years of tension and conflict among MOVE, city authorities, and some local residents, including a shootout with police in 1978 which left one officer dead, Philadelphia officials decided to evict members of the communal-living, back-to-nature Black Liberation group from their fortified house at 6221 Osage Avenue. (Accounts differ on who actually fired the shots that killed the police officer.)
On the morning of May 13, 1985, a violent confrontation erupted, with tear gas and thousands of rounds of bullets exchanged–resulting in a daylong standoff. To break the stalemate, Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor ordered the Police Bomb Unit to drop two satchel bombs from a helicopter onto a wooden bunker that had been constructed on top of the house. A tremendous fire broke out. Witnesses say that when MOVE members ran out of the burning building, police continued to shoot at them. The Fire Department, ordered by police to “let the fire burn,” delayed putting out the flames, claiming that MOVE members were still firing, but witnesses assert that the wait was deliberate.
The fire spread to adjoining houses, and two entire city blocks went up in flames, leaving 11 members of the group dead, including MOVE’s founder John Africa and five children who were in the house. Two hundred-fifty local residents were left homeless.
In the aftermath of these events, Mayor W. Wilson Goode convened the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (PSIC) to examine the incident. The head of the Commission, William Brown III, had led the Federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and the rest of the commission’s eleven members included prominent individuals from a variety of backgrounds.
The commission conducted dozens of interviews, gathered a large amount of evidence, and held public hearings. In March 1986, it issued a scathing report which was highly critical of government actions, stating that “Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable.”
With in the Urban Archives, Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) holds the records of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (PSIC), as well as a wealth of related photographs, audio-visual materials, and news clippings on this topic and the MOVE organization.
Consisting of 29 cubic feet of materials, PSIC Records provide a comprehensive account of the tragic events of that day. At the core of this collection are interviews the commission conducted, under subpoena power, with every policemen, firemen, public official, and resident involved. Supporting and related documentary evidence submitted by witnesses are also a part of these files, as well as approximately 700 photographs gathered or produce by the commission.
There are also hours of footage and transcripts from the televised hearings that ran on WHYY, as well as television news coverage of the event itself and of MOVE before and after the 1985 incident from WPVI and KYW.
There are hundreds of images in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Evening Bulletin photograph collections. The Inquirer Photographs contain over 300 images, the majority of which pertain to the 1985 conflict, the PSIC hearings, rebuilding, and the impact on the surrounding community. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photographs have over 550 images, documenting the communal life of MOVE as well as its previous clashes with the police during the 1970s. (The Evening Bulletin closed in 1982). Many of the Evening Bulletin photographs have been digitized and can be found in our digital collections.
It is safe to say that the SCRC houses the most comprehensive collection of primary sources available on this topic. Numerous students, documentarians, historians, and community members have drawn upon the archives to try to make sense of the events of that day. In 2013, a documentary by film maker Jason Osder made extensive use of these materials in his award winning film Let the Fire Burn.
To view these or other materials in the SCRC, please contact us at SCRC@temple.edu or visit our website.
–Josué Hurtado, Coordinator of Public Services & Outreach, SCRC
