Legacy Of Viola Liuzzo

Do you know the story of Viola Liuzzo?

She was a white woman (and mother of 5) who was murdered by the Klan (including an FBI informant) outside of Selma the night the March to Montgomery concluded.

I saw the marker in Alabama when I visited last spring (2021). It turns out she lived in Detroit when she died and I’ve been reading books about her. There are boxes of archive files in the nations largest labor library on Wayne States campus where she was a student. Her husband was a union leader in Detroit.

Today I took a trip to the archives to read some original documents including many hundred condolence messages.

Her story as exemplar of so many continuing tensions and wrongs and abuses is fascinating. It’s also incredibly sad. She was immediately the victim of a FBI and Klan disinformation campaign that the press fed like wildfire. A cross was burned on the lawn of her home shortly after she died. Her family suffered death threats. She was called a whore and a bad mother. The transcripts of the trial of her killers is enraging. And yet it’s even more infuriating to read all this with knowledge and what came next…not much and it enough. To see clarity and conviction erode over time is crushing. To see a near opportunity for a strong link between the labor movement and civil rights movement slip through the fingers of possibility. To know the singularity of her story as a white woman when so many Black men, women and children lost their lives and suffered under grave violence. To know that the Klan continued/s to operate with impunity. To know that voting rights are extremely unprotected. To know that smear campaigns and threats of racist violence and bullying is still the norm. To know that disinformation continues to ravage our democracy. To know that this very history is being outlawed in our schools and classrooms. Literally - how can we stand ourselves? Not just for what was but what is. History matters. Keep digging.

Images of the Homily read at her funeral are posted below.