Viola Liuzzo
Viola Liuzzo was a civil rights activist born in 1925 in California, Pennsylvania, who became a significant figure in the fight for African American voting rights. Growing up in poverty and witnessing racial injustices in segregated schools shaped her commitment to social justice. After moving to Ypsilanti, Michigan, she became actively involved in local civil rights organizations, eventually participating in the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965. Her involvement peaked during a violent confrontation known as Bloody Sunday, which galvanized national attention and action toward voting rights legislation.
Liuzzo tragically lost her life while driving activists back to Selma after one of the marches; she was shot by Ku Klux Klan members in a racially motivated attack. Her death highlighted the dangers faced by civil rights advocates and is regarded as a catalyst for the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year. In the aftermath, her family faced harassment and disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the FBI, aimed at discrediting her legacy. Despite the controversies surrounding her activism at the time, Liuzzo is now recognized as a martyr for civil rights, with her contributions formally honored in various ways, including her inclusion in the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
Viola Liuzzo
Civil rights activist
- Born: April 11, 1925
- Birthplace: California, Pennsylvania
- Died: March 25, 1965
- Place of death: Selma, Alabama
Also known as: Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo
Significance: Viola Liuzzo was a white civil rights activist who joined the protests for African American voting rights in the Deep South in 1965. She was shot by members of the Ku Klux Klan, the only white female activist slain during the civil rights era.
Background
Viola Liuzzo was born Viola Fauver Gregg in the small mining town of California, Pennsylvania. Her father, a World War I veteran, lost his hand in a mining accident, and the family was supported mainly by her mother, a teacher. During the Depression, the family relocated to Georgia and then Tennessee. The family moved often, living in poverty. Attending segregated schools in the South and seeing how the black people around her were routinely treated made an indelible impression on the young Liuzzo.
During World War II, Liuzzo moved with her family to Ypsilanti, Michigan. Liuzzo dropped out of school at sixteen over her parents’ objections, and moved to Detroit at eighteen, settling there and starting a family. Always active locally in social issues, she joined the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Life’s Work
Liuzzo never lost her interest in the civil rights movement. She followed events as African Americans fought for their voting rights throughout the Deep South, and was finally called to action by the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in Alabama in 1965. The tipping point came after the confrontation between civil rights supporters and police in Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7. The supporters, more than 600 led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had been scheduled to walk fifty miles from Selma to Montgomery in support of federal voting rights legislation. It would take, they estimated, four days. The crowd had just started when they confronted a battalion of Alabama state troopers and the all-white Selma police. The protestors were teargassed and many beaten with billy clubs; more than fifty were hospitalized. The confrontation, broadcast on national news, quickly became known as Bloody Sunday.
When King announced plans to attempt the march again, and issued a national call for civil rights supporters to join him, Liuzzo responded, heading south to join the protest. Later that month, after several failed attempts to complete the march, the protest march was successful. This time, thousands of protestors, black and white, joined King in the walk to the state capitol. By the time King spoke from the capitol steps, the following was estimated at more than 25,000.
When it was over, the marchers needed transportation back to Selma. Liuzzo and a nineteen-year-old black activist, Leroy Moton, agreed to help drive marchers in Liuzzo’s car back to the starting point. After dropping their passengers off in Selma, the two started the drive back to Montgomery. They stopped for gas and were harassed by a group of whites. Then, Liuzzo and Moton were spotted by a car with four Ku Klux Klan members in it, and a high-speed chase ensued. The men pulled up alongside Liuzzo’s car and shot her in the head. The car veered off the road into a ditch; Moton pretended to be dead until the other car drove away.
One of the four men in the car was FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe, and all four men were soon arrested. Rowe was granted immunity from prosecution and testified against the other three, but an all-white jury failed to convict them. Later they were convicted on lesser federal charges of civil rights violations and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Liuzzo was hailed as a martyr for civil rights—her funeral a week later in Detroit was attended by King himself. But her family was targeted for months of harassment, including a cross-burning on their lawn, for her activism. The FBI was embarrassed by the involvement of one of its informants in the violence, and, led by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover the organization began a rumor campaign to discredit Liuzzo—stories were leaked to news agencies that she and Moton were sexually involved, that she was a drug addict, and that she was an abusive mother. Two of Liuzzo’s children were later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and her husband turned increasingly to alcohol and later died. Only later did her children learn that the rumors against their mother originated with the FBI, and they tried unsuccessfully in the 1980s to sue the federal government.
Impact
Historians regard the slaying of Viola Liuzzo as having added to the momentum behind passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Her actions at the time were widely controversial, however: for a middle-class suburban housewife living quietly in Detroit to leave her family and join a turbulent political movement in another part of the country violated numerous social norms, and her actions were not widely celebrated until many years after her death—starting with her inclusion among the forty martyrs of the civil rights movement recognized on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She has been recognized many times since then, including in 2013, when Ford Motor Company named her one of the recipients of the fifteenth annual Ford Freedom Award.
Personal Life
Liuzzo was a Unitarian Universalist, and was married three times, the first time very briefly. In 1943 she married Detroit restaurant manager George Argyris and had two daughters with him before they divorced in 1949. She then married Teamster organizer Anthony James Liuzzo and had three more children: two sons and a daughter.
Bibliography
Bates, Karen Grigsby. "Killed for Taking Part in ‘Everybody’s Fight.’" NPR. NPR, 12 Aug. 2013. Web. 2 Sept. 2016.
Giannino, Joanne. "Viola Liuzzo." Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography. Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Soc., 16 June 2003. Web. 2 Sept. 2016.
Stanton, Mary. From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1998. Print.
Stanton, Mary. "Viola Gregg Liuzzo." Encyclopedia of Alabama. Alabama Humanities Foundation, 24 Oct. 2007. Web. 2 Sept. 2016.
"Viola Liuzzo Collection." Levi Watkins Learning Center Digital Library. Alabama State U, n.d. Web. 2 Sept. 2016.
Whitall, Susan. "Week of Events Will Honor Viola Liuzzo." Detroit News. Detroit News, 7 Apr. 2015. Web. 2 Sept. 2016.