One of the great open wounds of the black liberation struggle of the 1970s has finally been healed with the release of the last member of the Move 9, the group of radicals rounded up in a Philadelphia police siege in 1978 and held behind bars for more than four decades.
Chuck Sims Africa, 59, walked free from the Fayette state correctional institution in La Belle, Pennsylvania, on Friday morning. The youngest of the incarcerated group, he has been in custody since shortly after he turned 18.
His freedom marked his reunion with his family for the first time in almost 42 years. It was also historic, as it closed a chapter that had remained unfinished since the black power movement erupted in the late 1960s.
Alongside the Black Panthers, Philadelphia’s Move organisation was central to the volatile and at times violent struggle for black equality that lasted until the 1980s.