Talk:John Africa

Difficult to Parse
As a reader (not a proposed editor) of this page, I found the section on MOVE awkward and even incomprehensible in part. The phrase "Rendell's office then come up with" sounds like an exhausted verbal, un-encyclopedic narrative. The noun phrase "warrants signed by Governor Dick Thornburgh" should mention which state the man governed, as two states are in play here. The sentence "Judge Kendall Shoyer ordered Alberta Africa bound and gagged to keep her from raising the issue." does not clearly indicate what issue is being discussed. Lastly, "The jury declared Vincent and Alfonso innocent on all charges." is a candidate for improvement -- juries do not "declare", they "find", and they never find someone innocent. Rather, they find a defendant "not guilty." DulcetTone (talk) 20:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Poorly sourced
There is a grand total of one unlinked source cited. I took the liberty of linking it, but that source by itself does not support the assertions of the article. A lot more than one citation is called for to establish that the Philly PD bombed and killed these people.Groupthink 07:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll see you and raise you TIME magazine. There is value to asking for more citations, and there is value to the Socratic method, but please don't play disingenuous. --Dhartung | Talk 08:18, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * "Please don't play disingenuous"? Please don't make ad hominem attacks. Assume good faith. Groupthink 08:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and you might want to read up on the Socratic Method. You might be interested to learn that a rhetorical question is not the same thing as a Socratic inquiry. Groupthink 09:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

How's this for a source: I lived through it. It happened. 76.116.250.196 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Biased
Revolutionaries-with-a-capital-R? No mention of why the police allegedly commited this supposed massacre? If that's not WP:NPOV then I don't know what is. Groupthink 07:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Change it to radical. Be bold. Is anyone actually arguing with you, or do you just prefer a confrontational style? Usually that doesn't go over well on Wikipedia. --Dhartung | Talk 08:21, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, and if I'd gone ahead and made those changes, I'd have caught all sorts of flak. Instead, I offered my points for consideration on the talk page.  As for your other points, I find that pretty rude, quite frankly.  Calling me "confrontational" is a pretty confrontational move on your part, if you ask me.  Ad hominem attacks don't go over well on Wikipedia either.  Please address my points, not what you perceive my style to be.  Assume good faith. Groupthink 08:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Mumia Abu-Jamal
The Mumia Abu-Jamal material is completely irrelevant. Groupthink 07:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * According to sources, it is. Minor in terms of Africa's biography, but it seems relevant to talk about followers when you have a biography of a leader. --Dhartung | Talk 08:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Abu-Jamal requested that Africa represent him during his murder trial. That seems relevant to me. JCO312 18:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but could that be sourced, please? Groupthink 18:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd accept this as a sufficient citation, but it's from a partisan, primary source and I'd like third-party secondary source support for MAJ requesting JA as his attorney. However, I did add this as a cite for MAJ being a prominent follower of JA's teachings.  I'll take MAJ at his word that he's a JA disciple, but I think it's reasonable to not take MAJ's account of his trial at face value. Groupthink 19:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The trial transcript is available, but it's hosted by danielfaulkner.com, which is obviously not a neutral source. That being said, it is the transcript, so I would think its sufficient.  I'll put the reference in once I find the page and line numbers. JCO312 19:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say the source has sufficient verisimilitude so as to be sufficient, and heck, that transcript is riddled with JA refs. I'd leave it as is.  Nice job. Groupthink 19:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Why is MOVE blamed for the block being burned? Yes, they did fire; however, it is a two-way road, and they weren't the only ones engaging. MOVE didn't drop the bomb. Neutrality is preferable, even though many would like to see the PPD given the blame (just representing the misrepresented). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.163.234.39 (talk) 22:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Boldness/improvement
I have been accused of not being sufficiently bold and failing to make a sufficient attempt to improve this article. This puts me in a bind. If I barge ahead with an edit, then I'm going to get slammed. If I do nothing, then I'm going to get slammed. So in the interest of finding a middle ground, here is a revision of the page that I would find worthy of inclusion. If another editor finds this acceptable, then he/she has my blessing to make this change for her/himself, but I will not make that change. Let some other editor get raked over the coals by fanatical pro-MOVErs.

John Africa (born Vincent Leaphart) was the founder of MOVE, a militant West Philadelphia organization prominent in the late 1960's. He died on May 13, 1985 during an attempted eviction of armed MOVE members from a West Philadelphia rowhouse by the Philadelphia Police Department.  Mumia Abu-Jamal is a prominent follower of the teachings of John Africa.

References
 * Craig R. McCoy, "Who was John Africa?", Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine Jan 12, 1986

There, I've done the page creator's homework for her/him. Groupthink 09:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Merge to MOVE
The result was no merger (no consensus). -- Groupthink 00:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, so we now have a nice little article... but it's not about John Africa, it's about MOVE, and that's where it should be (pardon the pun) MOVED to. Groupthink 10:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think merger is necessary, or useful. There should be an article on John Africa. There is nothing wrong with crossover material, imho DDB 11:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem, as I see it, is that Mr. Africa chiefly derives his notoriety from MOVE, and has no notoriety outside of that context. I don't have a problem with cross-over either, but I do have a problem with redundancy. Groupthink 11:07, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Obviously, as I'm expanding this article, I think there's plenty of material here for both articles. The MOVE article itself doesn't need an extensive personal history of Africa or how he came to his philosophy, and Africa is invoked by himself often enough as a martyr or symbol that he's set apart from his followers. His notability may derive from MOVE, but that doesn't mean that article is the best place to discuss him. --Dhartung | Talk 08:04, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't like it when people employ the Google test to support notability arguments (it's the quality, not the quantity of hits that should count) but in this case I think it's relevant to point out that a Google search for "John Africa" gets 19,200 hits while one for "John Africa" -MOVE gets 831. In other words, when you search for pages containing "John Africa" but not MOVE, your hit count decreases by about 96%.  I don't have time to do an in-depth statistical analysis, but I'll also mention here that "John Africa" -"civil rights" gives a decrease of about 13% and "John Africa" -philosopher gives a decrease of about 2.6%, demonstrating that the Google-space correlation between John Africa and MOVE is much stronger than the GS-correlation between John Africa and civil rights or John Africa and philosopher.  Now I'm not saying this completely refutes the notion that Africa and MOVE's notability aren't inextricable, but it doesn't exactly help that notion's case either. Groupthink 23:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It occurred to me that for comparison, I should do a similar analysis on a couple of figures comparable to (except more notable than) Africa. I'll table-ize these later.


 * "John Africa": 19,200 Google hits.  Exclude "MOVE":  -95.7%.  Exclude "philosopher":  -2.6%.  Exclude "civil rights":  -13.0%.  Exclude "activist":  -15.6%.  Exclude all terms but MOVE:  -24.5%.  Exclude all terms:  -96.1%.
 * "Marcus Garvey": 713,000 hits.  Exclude "Black Star Line":  -3.2%.  Exclude "UNIA":  -8.35%.  Exclude "philosopher":  -15.8%.  Exclude "civil rights":  -15.8%.  Exclude "activist":  -9.2%.  Exclude all terms but "UNIA" and "Black Star Line":  -21.2%.  Exclude all terms:  -26.9%.
 * "Malik Shabazz": 32,200 hits.  Exclude "Black Panther":  -26.4%.  Exclude "philosopher":  -1.2%.  Exclude "civil rights":  -19.6%.  Exclude "activist":  -14.3%.  Exclude all terms but "Black Panther":  -29.8%.  Exclude all terms:  -41.6%.


 * Formal statistical correlation is left as an exercise for the reader. Groupthink 23:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I see no consensus here, but I'll leave this debate open one more day. Groupthink 07:28, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Just what is this supposed to mean?
It's written in this article that Alberta Africa was bound & gagged to prevent her from "raising the issue." What issue? I also believe that there was more to the judge's order of her being bound & gagged aside from her possibly speaking out, but I'm guessing that thr truth will be buried under the usual fiction that pervades many wiki articles. But to end the sentence in the section of this article I've shown with an unexpounded thought such as this is beyond bizarre. Please elaborate to clarify this matter. CuriouserandCuriouser6371 (talk) 13:25, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Image??
The image affiliated with this page, which other web sources have now picked up on, is of a balding Caucasian looking man. Is this really John Africa, or a prank? The question is a serious one because there aren't alot of extant pictures of the man on the web. I am seriously confused. According to my cursory research John Africa was an older black man with dreadlocks. Can anyone in the know weigh in? 74.73.161.125 (talk) 01:58, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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tagged with NPOV
The article is tagged for non-neutrality. The article is written exclusively from the perspective of the MOVE organization. It presents a highly distorted version of what Africa's ideas were which focuses on animal rights for some reason. Suggesting that their problems with the police were due exclusively to their activity related to "animal cruelty in zoos, the education system, and police brutality" is not a neutral presentation of the dispute. Stating that the death of the police officer in the standoff is proved by "evidence" to have been caused by friendly fire is non-neutral. 12.12.144.130 (talk) 17:06, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

It is stil POV. I fixed some, especially the grammar. Yet this: an idea to rebel against an oppressive society that bulldozed homes to make way to build more academic housing...

and more remains.

Zezen (talk) 06:29, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Removal of police bombing and use of excessive force
Why was mention of the police bombing (clearly supported in the police comission report) edited out by Czar in May 2022? 45.20.198.87 (talk) 13:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)