VIOLA LIUZZO
Viola Fauver Liuzzo (1925-1965) was an American civil rights activist and martyr who was murdered by three members of the Ku Klux Klan on March 25, 1965.
After moving to Detroit, Michigan in 1943, Liuzzo witnessed the racial tension and violence between ethic groups caused by the city's segregation and the high competition for jobs and housing with the increase in residents. Two years later, she married Anthony Liuzzo, a Teamsters union business agent, with whom she had three children. In 1964, she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
On March 7, 1965, approximately 600 unarmed marchers attempted to travel from Selma, Alabama, to the capital city of Montgomery and were attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by State Troopers. Seventeen people were hospitalized, and the incident later became known as Bloody Sunday. When Martin Luther King Jr. called for people of all faiths to join the struggle, Liuzzo called her husband to tell him she would be driving to Selma, leaving her children in the care of family and friends. Once there, she contacted the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was put to work delivering aid, welcoming and recruiting volunteers, and transporting volunteers and marchers in her 1963 Oldsmobile. On March 21st, more than 3,000 marchers led by King, Liuzzo among them, began the journey from Selma to Montgomery to campaign for voting rights for African Americans in the South. By the time they reached Montgomery on the 25th, the group had grown to around 25,000 people.
On March 25th, Liuzzo and 19-year-old African American Leroy Moton transported marchers and volunteers back to Selma in her car. As she drove, a car with four men- later found to be members of the Ku Klux Klan, including FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe- pulled up alongside the Oldsmobile and shot at Luizzo, striking her twice in the head. Moton, mistaken for dead due to being covered in Liuzzo's blood, managed to escape and flagged down a truck for help. Although the Klan members in the car were arrested, J. Edgar Hoover launched a smear campaign against Liuzzo mere days after her death, spreading false reports that Liuzzo used drugs and was romantically involved with Leroy Moton. The FBI's involvement in the smear campaign was not discovered until 1978, when Liuzzo's children obtained case documents under the Freedom of Information Act. FBI Informant Gary Thomas Rowe was tried in 1978 for his involvement in the murder, but was eventually acquitted.
