Delbert Orr Africa
DELBERT ORR AFRICA
AM4985
SCI Dallas
1000 Follies Road
Dallas, PA 18612
Personal Background
Delbert Orr Africa was born June 21, 1951. As a young man he joined the Chicago Chapter of the Black Panther Party. In 1969 the FBI put forth false warrants on the Chicago BPP leadership, including Delbert. He and others then fled to Canada. They struggled to get any financial support while in exile and started carrying out bank expropriations to sustain themselves.
In October of 1969 Delbert had been back in Chicago. As he was driving back to Canada he crashed and ended up in the hospital.
In March of 1970 Delbert and three other friends decided to head down to Philadelphia because one of them was originally from there. It was there in Philadelphia that he met members of the MOVE organization. He was inspired by their uplifting approach to revolution and stayed on with them.
He ended up becoming Minister of Confrontation and Security for the MOVE Organization.
When the police raided the MOVE house, Delbert was the one was videotaped being beaten brutally by police. He suffered a broken jaw and fractured eye socket from the attack.
Legal Case
what they were convicted for, how the trial went, the sentencing, etc.
Life in Prison
Delbert started his prison sentence out in the “hole” for 6 years in a Dallas prison for refusing to break his religious beliefs and cut his hair. In December 1989 he was transferred out of Dallas because they had riots at Camp Hill prison, which though he wasn’t even a part of, the state prison used as an excuse to send him to the Federal system.
In federal prison he was under 23 hour lock u , 24 hours lock up on weekends where they wouldn’t even let him out for yard. He stayed in long-term solitary confinement until May of that year. Then they transferred him to another prison.
At the new prison he was offered a job in the printing shop. They were mystified when he turned them down because pay was good for prison work- $86 a month. Delbert explained the situation,
“I said, ‘Naw, I don’t want that.’ They said, ‘Wait a minute. This is just starting off, you can move right on up.’ I said, ‘Look, I’ve been in the hole for 6 years. I want some air! I don’t want no career in the prison.’ So they assigned me to the yard detail. And that was it, I loved that. I stayed in there a year and they shipped me back to state. When I got back they put me in the hole for about 3 weeks, then I got out, they put me in population.
Thank you for posting this. May my father, the rest of the wrongfully incarcerated MOVE 9, and those that are also imprisoned just by color of skin, political ideology or happenstance of wrong place/wrong time receive justice. Onamove!