Today's episode of "Murder at Ryan's Run" touches on the foundation of MOVE in 1972. There's been so much packed into the last few episodes of the podcast and I'll continue to unpack as much as I can here, but that part of the podcast inspired me to go into a bit more detail about my thoughts on the creation of MOVE, specifically the invention of the John Africa mythos; the transformation of the man pictured below into God incarnate.
Vincent Leaphart, the man who would become John Africa
In the past few years, I've been able to study some primary source documents from the early days of MOVE which have helped me to understand how MOVE came to be, and how Vincent Leaphart made the transition from an eccentric man in his early 40s to an all-knowing sage whose existence precedes time itself. Eventually, I'll be posting and analyzing many more of these documents here.
My current understanding is that the John Africa mythos was a co-creation of Vincent Leaphart and Donald Glassey, a grad student and social worker who was in his early 20s when MOVE was founded. I believe that Leaphart, left to his own devices, may have continued to be an eccentric guy who cared for a lot of stray dogs, and Glassey, left to his own devices, may have continued with leftist activism and potentially less dangerous forms of trying to create a utopia in his own image. The combination of Glassey and Leaphart created the dynamic that birthed MOVE.
Donald Glassey, the co-founder of MOVE
As MOVE's philosophy developed Vincent Leaphart slowly morphed into Vinnie Africa, then to John Vincent Africa, and finally to JOHN AFRICA (as his name is written by MOVE). John Africa was the perfect human, the only person alive who was fully instinctual. He was also God. In order for John Africa to increase, Vincent had to decrease. Looking through very early MOVE documents this transformation is visible. Leaphart's sister, Louise James, viewed her brother Vincent and John Africa as two different beings. In her book, from the way she describes their relationship it sounds like she viewed her brother as channeling John Africa. In Louise's view her brother Vinnie was not a perfect being, he was the person who was most able to channel this perfect being. However, this is not the MOVE orthodoxy. MOVE's orthodoxy is that Leaphart was always John Africa, was always perfect, and that he had always been able to articulate MOVE's perfectly formed philosophy.
There's so much to dig into on this subject, but for this post I'll focus on introducing one specific MOVE document which I've posted below. To my knowledge, this is the first time this document has been available for anyone outside of the inner circle of MOVE to view. This document appears to be from around the time of the trial of the MOVE 9, 1980. The purpose of the document is to instruct MOVE members on how to create an air of mystique around John Africa in order to attract more followers. It's almost like an insider's guide to MOVE's branding strategy. I've posted four pages of the document below and have made notes under some of the pages. I recognize many of the strategies that are listed in the document as they are the very same strategies that pulled me into MOVE in the late '90s.
John Africa, after winning the Federal trial in 1981
At the top of this page the strategy is explicity laid out of not directly referring to John Africa as God, even though that is what is believed, but strongly implying it. This is done to allow people to accept what is being said without setting off all of the alarm bells that the more clear declaration would set off.
The testimonials suggested on this page are the exact testimonials that are being given to this very day. The suggestion to claim that John Africa predicted certain events is a common strategy. Within MOVE this claim is often made and when the prophecy fails the prediction is retroactively changed. MOVE consistently claimed, for years, that John Africa predicted that no Philadelphia sports team would win any championship until the MOVE 9 were freed. When the Phillies won the World Series in 2008 this prophecy was changed and MOVE members began saying that the Phillies won in order to draw attention to Philadelphia and, thus, the MOVE 9 (it did not).
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