MIKE AFRICA JR.
WRITER | LIBERATOR | BLACK WELLNESS CHAMPION
Mike Africa, Jr. is the scion of the Philadelphia-based MOVE organization, a predominantly Black revolutionary group, founded by his great uncle in 1972. On May 13, 1985 the Philadelphia police department dropped a C4 bomb on its headquarters- a rowhouse where 13 people resided. The bomb killed six adults and five children, destroying 65 of row houses in West Philadelphia, leaving 250 people homeless.
Mike was born in September 1978 inside his mother’s jail cell. She, along with Mike’s father, were incarcerated for a crime they did not commit and spent forty years imprisoned. Mike spent most of his adulthood pursuing legal recourse to liberate his parents from prison. The story of Mike’s work is told in the HBO documentary Forty Years a Prisoner.
Mike emerged from a complex but vital part of US history; although his family’s story has often been overlooked and intentionally erased, it is a dramatic representation of the seismic effects of police brutality in the United States, and a critical chapter in US revolutionary history.
Photo credit: Jan FigueroaLEARN MORE ABOUT MIKE’S STORY
“we can’t heal our world, until we heal ourselves.”
Mike is advocate fitness and wellness, and using running as his catalyst for personal and collective healing.
In 2024, he is honoring the 13 who lived inside the house bombed in 1985 through a movement called the ‘13 Challenge.’ For 13 months between May 2024 and May 2025, Mike is running 13 miles to honor each individual. The challenge concludes on May 13, 2025 - the 40th anniversary of the bombing.
In August 2024, Mike is releasing a memoir, ‘On A Move’, published by Harper Collins.