Monday, May 16, 2005
The MOVE Bombing, 20 Years Later: Reliving, Reflecting and Remembering
After a nearly daylong siege, authorities dropped a bomb on the roof of the rowhouse Africa and some dozen others called home. The bomb soon burst into fire, consuming 11 inside the house – including five children – and swept some 60 other homes into its devastation as authorities stood and watched a middle-class black neighborhood disintegrate.
Today, there is little left to the 6100 block of Osage Avenue that resembles what once was – an area where generations of black people struggled to earn their corner of the American Dream, and pass it on to their children. Now, there are scantily inhabited replacement homes – many residents took buyouts a decade or so ago – that neighbors still claim were sloppily constructed. A judge recently agreed with them, demanding that the city pay $12.8 million in restitution to the 24 homeowners who insist the city did not do right by them, neither in the rebuilt properties nor its previous $150,000 buyout offer.
posted by Cynthia
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