Songs of The Children

In the Fall of 2015, Jubilee 4th-6th grade students organized a campaign against police brutality. The idea came from students through a discussion about the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. One of the children said “They keep having protests and nothing changes. Maybe they’ll listen to children.” The students decided to use poetry as a means of communicating their message. They called their campaign “Songs of the Children: An Album of Voices for Justice”. They wrote:

“Poetry has depth, feeling and thought involved. With poetry, you can bring your heart out, and people will listen We decided to call our campaign “Songs of the Children: An Album of Voices for Justice” because poetry is a powerful way of speaking, and poems are like songs. We’re calling it an album because the album is our campaign, and inside the album are our songs, which represent all the actions that are working together in our campaign against police brutality.”

As part of their Songs of the Children campaign students researched and wrote a piece about the 1985 bombing of MOVE, in which 6 adults and 5 children were killed and 61 homes were destroyed. They went to the site of the bombing to memorialize what had happened through laying flowers at the door and reading poetry. They were shocked to see the condition of the block and decided that day to apply for a state historical marker to ensure that what was done by the police, with cooperation from the fire department, the City and the State, would never be forgotten.

Their application was approved, and in June of 2017, the group who had applied for the marker led an unveiling ceremony. The ceremony focused on poetry and music. The poets Sonia Sanchez and Ursula Rucker spoke and read their poetry and the West Philadelphia musical group, Kindred the Family Soul, performed. Ramona Africa and members of MOVE spoke, as did the block captain of the 6200 block of Osage Avenue, where the bombing had taken place. The two people who unveiled the historic marker were the grandson of a member of MOVE who had died in the fire, and the block captain. There was a sense of healing at the ceremony, as there had been much resentment on the part of many who had lost their homes towards the members of MOVE. The ceremony brought both groups together, acknowledging, through the arts, the loss experienced by all parties.

How a group of middle school students memorialized the MOVE bombing

NEWS

West Philly school founder shares the story of how students there led a campaign to install a historical marker at the site of the 1985 MOVE bombing.

by Natalia Sanchez Loayza May 13, 2025