Social justice documentaries have a tendency to proceed from such a set-in-stone perspective that they wind up discounting any complicating forces at play in their stories. Not so with 40 Years a Prisoner, Tommy Oliver’s sharply realized film about the conflict between Philadelphia police and the Black liberation MOVE organization that came to a head in 1978 with a shootout that left one officer dead and resulted in the conviction of nine MOVE members for homicide in the third degree. Offering a 360-degree portrait of that tragedy, Oliver’s endeavor (premiering Dec. 8 on HBO) has a distinct opinion about the conflagration and the wrongs that followed, and its point of view is bolstered by its willingness to candidly confront every aspect of its tale.
Produced by John Legend as well as Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson—whose band, The Roots, supplies its theme song—40 Years a Prisoner is guided by the present-day experiences of Mike Africa Jr., whose parents Mike Africa and Debbie Sims were two of the nine people held criminally responsible (to the tune of 30-100 years behind bars) for the death of Philly PD officer James J. Ramp during an Aug. 8, 1978, firefight between the cops and MOVE at the latter’s Powelton Village house. That clash was the culmination of mounting tensions between the two factions, which had really taken off a couple of months prior, when hardline Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo had decided that he’d had enough of MOVE—who he claimed posed a public health hazard, were stockpiling guns, and making threats—and literally barricaded them into their home via roadblocks designed to cut off their food and water supplies. MOVE naturally saw this starvation tactic as an attack, and negotiated to vacate the premises and surrender their weapons only if the city released their imprisoned members, which it eventually did.
MOVE regarded Rizzo and the city’s police department (led by Commissioner Joseph O’Neill) as violent racists, and Rizzo and the cops considered MOVE a revolutionary outfit looking to start trouble. 40 Years a Prisoner suggests that, to varying degrees, both were true. In TV clips, Rizzo speaks about MOVE in the most inflammatory and antagonistic manner possible, and footage of MOVE member Delbert Africa being horrifically kicked by a trio of cops during the 1978 skirmish—a scene that foreshadows the 1991 beating of Rodney King—underscores their brutal attitudes toward African Americans, which is then reinforced by the threesome’s later lack of remorse about their conduct. MOVE, meanwhile, is depicted as a group dedicated to an extremist pro-nature, anti-technology ideology (fostered by founder John Africa, whose surname was adopted by all members) that compelled them to live in unclothed, ramshackle squalor, and their failure to afford their members (including children) basic services was decried by many in the area. As reporter Kitty Caparella contends, MOVE was comprised of “kids adrift who were in a cult, and John Africa was the cult leader.”
