The Murder of Viola Liuzzo
[AdSense-A]
By Marlena Ryan
“Never be afraid to do what’s right. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.” – Martin Luther King, JR.
Viola Liuzzo watched the horror of the infamous day known as “Bloody Sunday” on her television screen, as major networks showed the brutal assault on civil rights protestors at the hands of Alabama State Troopers. But instead of simply feeling pity or doing nothing, she felt compelled to act by joining the fight for civil rights. In March of 1965, this wife and mother of five children told her husband, Anthony Liuzzo, that she was going to Selma, Alabama for one week.
22 years prior, in 1943, Viola Liuzzo, a middle-class white woman, met and became friends with a black woman named Sarah Evans. It was through Ms. Evans that Viola Liuzzo became a member of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP in 1964.When Mrs. Liuzzo decided to travel to Selma, Alabama in 1965, she spent three days traveling from Detroit, Michigan to Selma. When she arrived, she volunteered at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference where she was able to help register black voters. She also provided first-aid to many civil rights marchers.
On March 24, 1965, Viola Liuzzo drove several civil rights marchers and Leroy Moton, a 19-year-old black teenager, who had also been helping civil rights marchers, to Selma, Alabama. After dropping off the passengers, she offered to drive Moton back to Montgomery, Alabama. While they were driving, a car with four Ku Klux Klansmen followed them. The Klansmen were: Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., William Orville Eaton, Eugene Thomas, and Gary Thomas Rowe, who was also an FBI informant. Bullets from the Klansmen struck 39-year-old Viola Liuzzo in the head, killing her instantly. The car veered off the road and landed in a ditch. Moton, who was covered in Mrs. Liuzzo’s blood, pretended to be dead, as the Klansmen checked on the two before driving away. Leroy Moton was able to escape unharmed and report Mrs. Liuzzo’s murder.
The murder of the 39-year-old wife and mother of five made national news. With Gary Thomas Rowe being a paid FBI informant, he informed his handling agent of what had happened, and the four Klansmen were arrested within 24 hours of the murder. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the arrest of the four on television and requested that there be a Congressional investigation of the KKK.
Collie Leroy Wilkins, William Orville Eaton, and Eugene Thomas each faced murder charges and charges of depriving Viola Liuzzo of her civil rights. Gary Thomas Rowe received immunity by testifying for the prosecution and went into the witness protection program.
The three Klansmen were acquitted by an all-white male jury of murder but were found guilty in federal court of depriving Viola Liuzzo of her civil rights. Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas were each sentenced to ten years in prison. William Orville Eaton died of a heart attack before he could begin his sentence.
According to the New York Times, after Viola Liuzzo’s murder, the Governor of Michigan, George Romney, visited her family and stated that Mrs. Liuzzo, “gave her life for what she believed in, and what she believed in is the cause of humanity everywhere”. Anthony Liuzzo also received a phone call from President Lyndon B. Johnson, who said this about Viola Liuzzo: “I don’t think she died in vain because this is going to be a battle, all out as far as I’m concerned.” Her husband responded by saying: “My wife died for a sacred battle, the rights of humanity. She had one concern and only one in mind. She took a quote from Abraham Lincoln that all men are created equal and that’s the way she believed.”
On March 29, 1965, a memorial service at the People’s Community Church in Detroit, Michigan had over 1500 people in attendance. A funeral for Viola Liuzzo was held the next day, March 30, 1965, at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church with over 750 people in attendance, including Martin Luther King, Jr. On April 1, 1965, two days after Mrs. Liuzzo’s funeral, a cross was burned on the lawn of her family’s home in Detroit, Michigan. Her husband and children also received hate mail and obscene phone calls after her death.
The FBI along with Selma officials and the media would also begin to tarnish Mrs. Liuzzo’s reputation. To take attention off the FBI’s handling of Viola Liuzzo’s murder, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover allowed false reports to be leaked to the media. There were claims that she was a member of the Communist party. There were also claims that she was an unstable woman who had been having an affair with Leroy Moton. Her husband, Anthony Liuzzo was depicted as being a thug. Selma Sheriff Jim Clark shared a file called the “Lane Report” which described Viola Liuzzo as being a drug addict and adulteress. Media outlets released articles which questioned Mrs. Liuzzo’s character. And people began to condemn Mrs. Liuzzo’s actions, believing that it would have been better for her to stay at home and tend to her children rather than leave home to fight for the civil rights of black people.
1978, thirteen years after the murder of Viola Liuzzo, the Freedom of Information Act released documents which revealed that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was behind the smear campaign of Mrs. Liuzzo, due to fear of the FBI’s culpability regarding informant Gary Rowe’s involvement in the murder. In 1979, the five children of Viola Liuzzo sued the FBI over the handling of their mother’s murder, but the case was ultimately dismissed.
Despite the efforts to tarnish her reputation, Viola Liuzzo has been honored in several ways. In 1991, the Women of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had a stone marker placed at the location on Highway 80 where she was murdered. Sadly, the marker has been vandalized numerous times, including an occasion where the confederate flag was painted on it by a vandal in 1997. In 2015, the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, awarded Viola Liuzzo with a posthumous honorary doctorate degree. And in 2019, a statue was unveiled at a park which also bears her name in Detroit, Michigan.