by Maiga Milbourne
A number of people keep asking about the significance of John Gilbride. Honestly, the question stings. John Gilbride was married to the leader of MOVE, Alberta Africa. He is the father of a MOVE child, Zack Africa. He was in MOVE the same way as Kevin and I and any other supporter. He dedicated his life to MOVE. He was there for years. He lived at MOVE’s Kingsessing Ave. headquarters with Alberta as people like Ria, Consuewella, and Ramona were just coming home from prison. Everyone who was around at that time knew him.
And he was murdered.
How can that not matter? How can he not matter?
Significantly, he was a father of a child in MOVE. Parents being separated from their children in MOVE is one of the many throughlines between his murder and Pixie (June)’s escape.
In recent months, I’ve come to understand some patterns.
John Africa recruited women. Women MOVE members were meant to pull in men. Even better, single mothers were the perfect MOVE members. There were a number of them in the early days of MOVE and a number of women in recent times became single mothers when their husbands were driven from the organization.
John Africa wanted their children. He fed the children MOVE’s raw food diet, ensured they were not educated, kept them outside in all weather, and indoctrinated them to MOVE’s beliefs. He was trying to create a “perfect” human through his experiment.
Fathers, or any parents who dissented and had the ability to push back, were threats. The recent “Murder at Ryan’s Run” podcast recounts Andino Ward, father of Oyewolffe AKA Birdie Africa, being repeatedly attacked for trying to see his son.
I came around MOVE when the custody battle between John Gilbride and Alberta Africa was at a fever pitch. At that time, it was told to me as an intersectional Black feminist struggle. Alberta Africa was the Black mother defending her child against an arrogant and potentially dangerous white man. I was 21 and I didn’t do my own research. The claims made about John and his family were ludicrous and easily disproven.
John tried to play by the rules. He left quietly. He then filed for divorce and custody. Alberta wouldn’t allow John to even have private visitation with his son. The courts, however, did grant John visitation. And the night before John had a court-ordered unsupervised visit with his son, he was gunned down in his car.
June, Whit, and the other young women in MOVE were pushed into early marriages. Ria and Bert said things like, “they’re fast (meaning promiscuous. June was 12 when this unfounded, untrue, and dangerous claim was made). They’ll cause trouble if they’re not married.” They were pushed into multiple pregnancies because that kept them busy. They were creating children for MOVE. They were expected to have their children ready to perform at every program or sanctioned protest. They were expected to bring their children into MOVE headquarters, as it was boarded up and headed into a possible confrontation during the custody battle in 2002.
At various points when these MOVE-born parents pushed back against Ria and Bert, they were repeatedly told: “these are not your children. These are MOVE children.”
The same that Andino was told. The same that John was told. The same that so many others were told.
This is why when June left, she took her children. Same as Val before her. Those who took their children kept their children. Those who left without their children lost them to MOVE.
Supporters received opposite messaging. Shortly after John was killed, white supporters Tony and Lori, who had a toddler, publicly left MOVE. Ria would say all the time that having a child had activated “system training” in them. That MOVE supporters never stayed after they had children and their marriages didn’t last either. The mandate was to “stay in MOVE” and “get strong,” meaning, be blindly dedicated to Ria and Bert’s whims.
In my 20s, I didn’t feel ready to have children so the recommendation sat fine with me. Other supporters, like Ellie and Bob, had children and quietly left. Each time this happened it was used as an example of the dangers of becoming parents.
What I didn’t know at the time is that experiencing pregnancy and parenthood in MOVE exposed you much more quickly to the evils and corruption within the cult. Because I didn’t have children of my own, I only knew the rhetoric, not the reality. Given that the espoused belief is “life” I thought both that the pregnancies were desired (maybe sometimes accidental, but still wanted) and that pregnant and birthing parents were treated with care and respect.
Nothing was further from the truth.
Some supporters never had children. Ria would say that John Africa taught that menopause isn’t real and doesn’t apply to MOVE women. She is in her 70s but said that she would have another child.
Some supporters would try to wait as long as Ria and Bert dictated only to find that their childbearing years had passed and that they were no longer able to become parents. Other couples were pitted against one another, where one partner would privately sabotage conception based on Ria and Bert’s dictates.
As I lived into my 30s, I began to want children.
Alberta would say tone-deaf things to me like, “why don’t you just adopt?” I would explain how costly adoption is and she would shrug. She often seemed oblivious to these types of realities. Obviously, adoption is a laudable act and one I consider for myself. However, at that time, I was telling Bert that I wanted the experience of pregnancy and birth if it was available to me, and she was callously dismissing that.
Ria continuously said not to get pregnant. Finally, I told her that if I continued to heed her advice and the window of opportunity passed for me, I would resent her and resent MOVE. She couldn’t get around that.
When I did get pregnant, it was like a switch was hit with Ria and Bert. They treated me completely differently. They were used to me attending to their needs and being on call to take them places. My priority was my growing child so I couldn’t be at their beck and call. I began to save the abusive voicemails that I received from Ria or shared them with other MOVE members so that she couldn’t invent lies about me.
The first thing that Bert said to me, on the phone, when I shared the news of the pregnancy, was “I’ll come over and babysit.” Something in me went cold and I knew that I would never allow her access to my child.
When I did go down to be around Ria, I would be put in unsafe situations. At that time, Ria was constantly warring with a young MOVE member in his early 20s. On multiple occasions, they would get in public screaming matches on the streets of Philadelphia. Ria is a white woman in her 70s and this was a young Black man with locks. No one on the street knew they considered themselves family. On several occasions, I was terrified that a physical fight would break out. I was pregnant, so I couldn’t intervene. I would call June afterward. I was so bewildered that they would endanger me when I was pregnant. I actually think that my being pregnant escalated Ria. She and Bert really seem to hate pregnant women.
I did my best to avoid being around MOVE leadership in my pregnancy. I still called Ria once a week as I had for years. Usually, she complained and berated me. I was doing my best to keep my mind peaceful (what I thought was MOVE’s belief) and aligned towards birthing my daughter. I remember that I was about 38 weeks pregnant in the beginning of June 2019 and went for a walk. I sat on a bench under a pine tree and called Ria. Janet and Janine had recently come home from prison. I was really happy that they were home and trying to steer the conversation towards celebrating that victory. Ria began yelling at me, “you and Kevin are SO diplomatic! You want to support Debbie and Mike. You’re SO liberal. You won’t choose sides.”
Finally, I just said, “I have to go.” I hung up the phone and that was the last time that I spoke with her.
Shortly after, Kevin wrote an open letter to MOVE explaining how these types of dynamics were unhealthy and we were unwilling to be a part of them. He made sure that everyone in the organization received it so that again, Bert and Ria couldn’t lie.
I now understand that young people in MOVE are forced into early parenthood to control them. Supporters are kept from parenthood to control them. The ultimate design is to have full access to the children to continue John Africa’s mission of “creating” a perfect being. MOVE always said, “application don’t need no conversation” meaning that you see the truth of the belief in the evidence.
This is the evidence: there were five children killed on Osage Ave. who never should have been brought into that house, the harassment and intimidation campaign against John Gilbride and his family fits a pattern that repeats throughout MOVE's history, six people who were born into MOVE are coming forward with stories of systemic abuse that they have only begun to reveal. The survivors who were born in are escaping and telling the story to protect those who remain.
Maiga Milbourne was a dedicated MOVE supporter from 2002-2018. She distanced herself from the group as she began to note troubling patterns within MOVE. In 2021, June Stokes AKA Pixie Africa disclosed severe abuse suffered within MOVE. Together with Maiga’s husband Kevin Price, “Murder at Ryan’s Run” podcast producer Beth McNamara, podcast researcher Bob Helms, and former MOVE members Josh and Whit Robbins, a plan was crafted where June publicly left MOVE with her 5 children and went into hiding. Publicity from both the podcast and this blog has been used to keep her and her children safe.
