Biography
Delbert Samuel Orr Africa was a Black Panther and MOVE member.
Orr joined the Chicago Black Panther Party (C-BPP) in the early months of 1969, enrolled in their mandatory six-week Marxist and Socialist political education program, and briefly became its Minister of Information.
After the December 4, 1969 police/FBI assassination of C-BPP chairman Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Orr fled to Philadelphia. He met John Africa, formally Vincent Lopez Leaphart, and his Community Action Movement (MOVE) in March 1970, and within months he joined, making Africa his last name. MOVE was a Black liberation, naturalist group that embraced environmentalism, sustainability, and anti-capitalism.
In May 1973, MOVE purchased a communal Powelton Village home, near Drexel University. John appointed Delbert as Minister of Confrontation and Security after the formerly peaceful organization was driven to armed self-defense in 1977 to counter years of judicial subjugation, state violence, incarcerations, and fines. Tensions escalated in March 1976 when Philadelphia police stomped to death a MOVE infant, Life Africa.
On August 8, 1978 the police evicted MOVE from their house. In the confrontation friendly fire killed Officer James J. Ramp, and an unarmed and shirtless Delbert Africa was savagely beaten. Media outlets nationally beamed the video-recorded brutal assault, which resulted in a cracked cheekbone, broken right-jaw, fractured eye-socket, and multiple lacerations/contusions. In 1981, despite an unidentified shooter, inconsistencies, and absence of intent, Delbert Africa and eight MOVE members were sentenced to 30-100 years in prison for Ramp’s death.
On May 13, 1985, police bombed MOVE’s Cobbs Creek row home that resulted in the murder of eleven of its members and 250 Philadelphians becoming unhoused. The deceased included Delesha (Delitia) Melissa Orr Africa, the twelve-year-old daughter of Delbert and Janet Holloway Africa. As in the 1978 police beating, no officers were criminally prosecuted.
Delbert Africa spent forty-one years in prison before being released in January 2020. For six years of his incarceration, Delbert Africa was put in an infamous solitary confinement wing known by prisoners as the “dungeon”. His isolation was imposed because he refused to have his dreadlocks cut – part of the MOVE philosophy. He died of prostate and bone cancer six months later on June 15, 2020 at the age of 74. In April 2021, Princeton and University of Pennsylvania apologized for their unethical use and possession of Delesha and Tree Africa’s remains.
