A Footnote to Hatred

Viola Liuzzo was born in 1925 in California, Pennsylvania. As a child she lived in poverty during the Depression as her family struggled to survive in Chattanooga, Tennessee and then Detroit, Michigan.

Viola married young and had two children, divorced at the age of 24 and remarried and had 3 more children with her second husband. She was a mother of (5) children when, in 1965 she made a decision to stand up for something she believed in.
She started attending the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Detroit in 1964 and that, coupled with her exposure to dehumanizing Jim Crow laws perpetrated against blacks in the South, compelled Viola to join the NAACP. In early 1965 Martin Luther King and many other civil rights leaders had planned their now historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to protest the difficulty of blacks being allowed to vote in the state of Alabama. King was desperate for as much outside support as he could get and he made a plea for anyone who felt that the fight for justice needed some allies. Many people left their homes from distant states to come support the movement; ministers and clergy and college students and average citizens came to do what they could to contribute.

Viola Liuzzo, a housewife, was one of those "average" citizens who traveled to Selma from far away. She drove alone in her 1963 Imperial from her home and family in Detroit, Michigan. I doubt if there were many white housewives who felt so unnerved about the racial hatred that they left their families to join hands with Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young, and John Lewis and face the wrath of hateful Alabama citizens and a police force that worked closely with the KKK whenever necessary to combat and squash any black resistance to their roles as segregated and unequal citizens. The march was ultimately to gain support for a Voting Rights Act to be passed by Congress and signed by the President that would make it a Federal law that no state can obstruct or intimidate anyone from exercising their right to vote.

President Johnson had previously told King that a Voting Rights Act would not be forthcoming in 1965. King had grown impatient.

Having brought her own car to the struggle, Viola was given the assignment to ferry volunteers from Selma to Montgomery to and from bus stops or airports, etc., in order to facilitate the success of the march.

On March 21, 1965, the third day of the march, Viola was taking Leroy Moton, a 19-year-old African American, back to Selma in her car. As they were driving along Route 80, a car tried to force them off the road. After dropping passengers in Selma, she and Moton headed back to Montgomery. As they were getting gas at a local filling station, they were subject to abusive calls and racist scorn.

When Liuzzo stopped at a red light, a car with four members of the local, Ku Klux Klan, including FBI infiltrator named Gary Thomas Rowe, pulled up alongside her. When they saw a white woman and a black man in a car together, they followed Liuzzo as she tried to outrun them. Overtaking the Oldsmobile, they fired two shots into her head that killed her instantly. The car veered into a
ditch, crashing into a fence."

It turns out that Gary Thomas Rowe, the FBI infiltrator, was actually sympathetic with the KKK and he was involved personally in many other attacks on blacks in the south.

In 1961, Gary Thomas Rowe helped plan and lead a violent mob attack against the Freedom Riders in Anniston, Alabama.

Rowe admitted to using bats and pipes to aid in the beating of Freedom Riders. Rowe also was an accomplice in the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young girls. He was a government informant who actually did nothing to thwart the violence committed by the KKK against blacks. He would often give the FBI information about violence that was to occur and the FBI would not take measures to prevent it.

When word got out that Rowe was actually an FBI informant who was complicit in the murder of Viola Luizzo the FBI created false disinformation for politicians and the press, alleging that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist party, was a heroin addict, and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African-Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement. These were all slanderous and completely false accusations against a murdered mother of five. These were very common tactics used by the FBI in order to discredit people they were investigating.

All four men in the car were arrested but Gary Thomas Rowe was released after being identified as a government witness (who was actually an accomplice). In spite of the fact that Rowe identified Collie Wilkins as the shooter and the fact that the bullets pulled from Viola's brain matched the gun belonging to Wilkins two separate juries acquitted Wilkins and the other 2 men of all charges. The murder had an eyewitness by someone in the car (Rowe) and yet they could not get a conviction.

Less than two weeks after her death, a charred cross was found in front of four Detroit homes, including the Liuzzo residence. The Liuzzo residence was still the home of her husband and their (5) young, motherless children. It's hard to comprehend the level of hatred that existed, almost to a man, with whites towards blacks in the deep south. Acts of violence, even brutal murder, were committed or cheered on with impugnity and without remorse by even the most gentile, God fearing Christian women and men. Those who perpetrated the murder and beatings could depend on the white townspeople to support them unwaveringly. Just like with the brutal lynching of Emmet Till, it was easy for the murderers to raise money from their neighbors in the community for their legal defense when it came to killing blacks (of all ages). Viola was murdered because she was trying to answer a call for justice. Then, she is slandered and soiled with scandalous lies by her own government. Then, her killers are acquitted. Then, a burning cross is placed in her front yard for her grieving children to see.

Viola Liuzzo was disguised as an "average" citizen but she was very far from average. She brought courage and empathy that was lacking in all but a very miniscule percentage of the population. Most in the South were pleased with the beatings of black protesters; others were indifferent, and fewer still disapproved of the beatings but lacked the courage and conviction to get involved. Viola was no "average" citizen. Viola and her five children paid the ultimate price for her courage. Martin Luther King traveled to Detroit for her funeral a few weeks later.

Viola Liuzzo Park is located at Winthrop and Trojan in Detroit.

Liuzzo has her name included as part of the Civil Rights Memorial, a monument in Montgomery, Alabama.

In 2004, Liuzzo was the subject of a documentary, Home of the Brave

In 2008, Liuzzo's story was memorialized in a song, "Color Blind Angel," by the late blues singer Robin Robers

In 2015, Wayne State University bestowed its first posthumous honorary doctorate degree to Liuzzo.

In 2019, a statue which honors Liuzzo's memory was unveiled in Detroit.

Food for thought.....