Today In Black History
Viola Liuzzo, Civil Rights Martyr
Issue #530 Today In Black History, Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Today’s Black History WOW!
Viola Gregg Liuzzo was a civil rights activist who dedicated her life to fighting for racial equality and justice. Born in 1925 in California, she later moved to my hometown of Detroit where she became involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Viola Gregg spent much of her childhood and adolescence poor in Tennessee, where she experienced the segregated nature of the South firsthand. This would have a powerful impact on her activism.
When the Gregg family moved to Detroit, Michigan and Viola was still a teenager, the city was starkly segregated by race. Tensions between whites and Blacks were very high there and the early 1940s saw violence and rioting. Witnessing these horrific ordeals was a major motivator that influenced Viola's future civil rights work.
After her third marriage to Anthony Liuzzo, Viola returned to school and attended the Carnegie Institute in Detroit, Michigan. She then enrolled part-time at Wayne State University in 1962.
In 1964, she began attending the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit and joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Liuzzo so passionately believed in the fight for civil rights that she helped organize Detroit protests, attended civil rights conferences, and worked with the NAACP.
In March 1965, Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. (FYI: Edmund Pettus served as a U.S. senator from Alabama. He was also a Confederate general and a Grand Wizard in the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.)
Liuzzo participated in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. On March 25, at the age of 39, while driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was fatally hit by shots fired from a pursuing car containing three Ku Klux Klan members and one undercover FBI agent.
Within 24 hours of the murder, President Lyndon Johnson went on television to announce the arrests of the KKK members and demanded an immediate Congressional investigation of the KKK.
Although the State of Alabama was unable to secure a murder conviction, the Ku Klux Klan members were charged in federal court with conspiracy to intimidate African Americans under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction civil rights statute. On December 3, 1965, the KKK trio was found guilty by an all-white, all-male jury, and was sentenced to ten years in prison, a landmark in Southern legal history.
To cover up the fact that an FBI agent was involved in Mrs. Liuzzo's murder, the FBI produced disinformation for politicians and the press, falsely stating that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party, a heroin addict, and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African-Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Liuzzo's involvement in the civil rights movement was scrutinized and she was condemned by various racist organizations.
Less than two weeks after her death, a charred cross was found in front of four Detroit homes, including the Liuzzo residence. Her husband and children had to have round-the-clock security for the next two years.
In 1978, documents released through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover masterminded the smear campaign.
In 1992, Viola Liuzzo was posthumously honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal.
Viola Liuzzo received many other posthumous awards, including the prestigious Ford Freedom Humanitarian Award. In 2015, Wayne State University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, its first posthumous grant.
A martyr of the Civil Rights Movement, and the only white woman killed during that struggle, her death was believed to have helped spark the passing of the Voting Rights Act just five months later.
Mrs. Viola Liuzzo's name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, created by Maya Lin.
Today In Black History
- In 1773, Black fur trader Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable founded the settlement that became the City of Chicago.
- In 1945, New York became the first state to establish a Fair Employment Practices Commission.
- In 1982, Charles Fuller won the Pulitzer Prize for “A Soldier’s Play.”
- The “Comments” feature has been disabled. Instead, let’s discuss these facts in our community on Substack Notes. You can also read other Substack publications without subscribing to them when you join Notes.
This post is free to read/listen to for three days after publication. To have 365 24/7 access to all our posts and podcast episodes and financially support “We Are Speaking” for no more than $5 per month, please subscribe at the paid level. You will receive a 7-day FREE trial!
