It was an open secret in Philadelphia that Mayor Wilson Goode beat his wife, Velma. There were even cops assigned to his house to take his occasionally-battered wife to a suburban hospital, away from reporters. What wasn’t as well known was that as the MOVE siege was coming to a boil, the mayor was down in South Carolina, trying to run the whole operation by phone, according to a senior cop I talked to that night.
The reason? He allegedly beat his wife so badly, she finally had enough and was going to file for divorce on those grounds. He was hiding out while political leaders were trying to talk her out of it — what a stain on the first black mayor, etc. (That’s according to a local donor, who was at that meeting. The same donor told me later he “deeply regretted” ever backing the famously inept Goode.) Goode later became a minister, and he and his wife are still married.
And put the rest of it in this context: Everyone hated MOVE. I mean, imagine nuts with guns and megaphones turning your neighborhood into an armed camp, screaming amplified threats 24/7. During their first standoff in hippie hangout Powelton Village, a cop was killed. (Friendly fire, or MOVE? No way to know.)
Then they moved to Osage Avenue in Cobbs Creek, a really nice middle-class black neighborhood. Lots of teachers, civil servants, etc. who took pride in the place. When MOVE built a stockade around their property and started throwing garbage in the yard and the street, rats invaded the neighborhood — which did not go over well. (MOVE loved rats. After all, they were animal rights activists.) When the megaphones were working, it was hard to sleep. And of course there were the weapons. The mayor’s office was inundated with demands to DO SOMETHING.
You have some idea of the rest, I suppose. Who the fuck knows who’s telling the truth? (Odd trivia: I went to West Catholic with Ramona Africa, the only living survivor. I remember a very quiet girl with coke-bottle glasses.)
