{"id":11036,"date":"2023-08-28T00:00:11","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T04:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=11036"},"modified":"2023-08-30T19:48:54","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T23:48:54","slug":"viola-liuzzo-1925-1965","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/08\/viola-liuzzo-1925-1965\/","title":{"rendered":"Viola Liuzzo (1925-1965)"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/span>f the people commemorated by the Civil Rights Memorial, only one is a white woman. Her name is Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit housewife, part-time Wayne State University student, and member<\/a> of the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Cass Avenue. In the years after her death, Viola Liuzzo has been the subject of statues and memorials in Alabama and Detroit. In 2015, her alma mater Wayne State University bestowed<\/a> its first posthumous honorary doctorate upon her and created a nursing scholarship in her honor. Despite these honors, when I asked family and friends, most didn\u2019t remember Liuzzo, even those who went to Wayne State. Part of this may be explained by the decade long attempt to tarnish her heroism.<\/p>\n

Viola Liuzzo believed strongly in the civil rights movement and joined the NAACP in 1964. She saw the images of state troopers and police officers beating peaceful protesters in Selma on \u201cBloody Sunday\u201d (March 7, 1965) and heard the call of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for people to come to Selma to help. Her husband Anthony, a Teamsters business agent, warned her of the danger, but she answered that call.<\/p>\n

Viola Liuzzo drove down to Alabama in her 1963 Oldsmobile and participated in the march to Montgomery, the state\u2019s capital, and volunteered at a first aid station. On March 25th, she and Leroy Motin, a 19-year-old Black man, were helping shuttle volunteers back to Selma from Montgomery in the Oldsmobile. One of the people she drove was the singer Tony Bennett. The trips were dangerous. At one point a car tried to force them off the road, and when getting gas, they were met by racist scorn and abuse. Then, when stopped at a red light, a car filled with four men pulled up alongside them. Their names were Collie Wilkins, Gary Rowe, William Eaton, and Eugene Thomas. They were members of the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n

When the Klansmen saw a white woman and a Black man in the car, they chased them down. The Klansmen fired their guns into the car, and Viola Liuzzo was killed. Leroy Martin, covered in blood, played dead when the KKK members inspected their gruesome handiwork. After he was sure they had left, he managed to flag down help from Reverend Leon Riley, who was likewise ferrying civil rights marchers back to Selma.<\/p>\n

\"A
Images from the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965; photo credit: picryl<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Viola Liuzzo\u2019s funeral was held in the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Detroit on March 30th. In attendance were Dr. King, UAW President Walter Reuther, and Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, who allowed the use of the Teamsters\u2019 private plane to transport the body back to Detroit. At the funeral, Hoffa presented<\/a> Dr. King with a $25,000 check to Dr. King\u2019s Southern Christian Leadership Council. The Teamsters additionally set up<\/a> a fund to help in paying for the education of the five Liuzzo children.<\/p>\n

Not everyone reacted to the murder with sadness. After Liuzzo\u2019s funeral, four crosses were burned<\/a> in Detroit. One was burned at the former headquarters of the Detroit NAACP, one at the City-County building, one at the home of Black resident Louis Washington, and one at the Liuzzo family home. Expecting violence after a group tried to break down the family\u2019s door, shifts of Teamsters kept watch<\/a> over the home. When 6-year-old Sally Liuzzo returned<\/a> to school after her mother\u2019s murder, adults lined the streets to throw rocks at her. Her father then had her transfer schools. Sally was later diagnosed with PTSD. In a truly ghoulish move, an advertiser in the Birmingham News offered to sell<\/a> the car Liuzzo was murdered in for $3,500, calling the bullet-ridden car a \u201ccrowd pleaser.\u201d Not even organized labor was entirely sympathetic. A Black autoworker claimed that \u201c90-odd workers at the V-8 engine plant collected several hundred dollars to help finance the defense of the Ku Klux Klansmen accused of killing Mrs. Viola Liuzzo.\u201d He called his union, UAW 659, a \u201cConfederate local.\u201d1

The city of Warren\u2019s Police Commissioner Marvin G. Lane piled more dirt upon the family. Lane compiled an unflattering report using confidential Detroit Police files, detailing some of the family\u2019s troubles and Viola Liuzzo\u2019s struggles with mental health. Lane sent it along to Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark, who claimed he needed the report because he was threatened over the phone by a Teamster. Clark, a rabid segregationist, then likely passed it along to the KKK. The Klan used the information within the report to defend their accused members and darken the name of Viola Liuzzo.2