Murder of Viola Liuzzo

Murder of Viola Liuzzo
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Title	Murder of Viola Liuzzo
Location	U.S. Highway 80, between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama
Date	March 25, 1965
Target	Viola Liuzzo
Type	Assassination, Hate crime
Perps	Collie Leroy Wilkins Jr., Eugene Thomas, William Orville Eaton
Motive	Opposition to Civil Rights Movement

Murder of Viola Liuzzo The murder of Viola Liuzzo was the fatal shooting of a white civil rights activist by members of the Ku Klux Klan on March 25, 1965, in Lowndes County, Alabama. Her killing occurred on the night following the successful completion of the third Selma to Montgomery march, a pivotal event in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Liuzzo's death highlighted the extreme violence faced by activists and became a national symbol of the struggle for voting rights and racial equality.

Background and activism

Viola Gregg Liuzzo was a 39-year-old mother of five from Detroit, Michigan. A part-time student at Wayne State University, she was deeply influenced by the growing civil rights struggle in the American South. She was a member of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP and had participated in local protests. Motivated by the televised violence of "Bloody Sunday" on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Liuzzo traveled to Selma, Alabama, to volunteer her assistance. Leaving her family behind, she joined the ranks of northern volunteers, demonstrating a commitment to racial justice that crossed regional and racial lines.

The Selma to Montgomery marches

Liuzzo arrived in Selma in mid-March 1965, during the climactic series of Selma to Montgomery marches organized by James Bevel and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), including Martin Luther King Jr.. These marches were a direct action campaign for African American voting rights. After two previous attempts were met with brutal police violence, a federal court order permitted a third march. Liuzzo helped with logistics and support, ferrying marchers and volunteers in her car. On March 25, she attended the triumphant rally at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, where King delivered his "How Long, Not Long" speech.

Events of the murder

On the evening of March 25, after the rally, Liuzzo was driving a 1963 Oldsmobile along U.S. Highway 80, shuttling marchers back to Selma. She was accompanied by a 19-year-old African American volunteer, Leroy Moton. A car carrying four members of the KKK from Birmingham—Collie Leroy Wilkins Jr., Eugene Thomas, William Orville Eaton, and an FBI informant named Gary Thomas Rowe—spotted them. The Klansmen gave chase, pulled alongside Liuzzo's car, and Wilkins fired two shots from a pistol, striking Liuzzo in the head and killing her instantly. The car veered off the road. Moton, though unhurt, pretended to be dead, which likely saved his life when the Klansmen returned to check the scene.

Investigation and trial

The investigation was swift due to the presence of informant Gary Rowe, who immediately reported the crime to his FBI handlers. All four men in the car were arrested. The state of Alabama, under Attorney General Richmond Flowers Sr., prosecuted Collie Wilkins for murder. The first trial in Hayneville in May 1965 resulted in a hung jury; an all-white jury deadlocked 10–2 for conviction. A second trial in October 1965 ended with a full acquittal. Federal prosecutors then successfully tried Wilkins, Thomas, and Eaton under the 1870 Enforcement Act for conspiring to violate Liuzzo's civil rights. In December 1965, an all-white federal jury in Montgomery convicted the three men. They were sentenced to ten years in prison, marking the first time in history that a white jury in the South convicted Klansmen for crimes against a civil rights worker.

Aftermath and legacy

Viola Liuzzo's murder sent shockwaves through the nation. President Lyndon B. Johnson appeared on national television to condemn the Klan and announce the arrests, and he posthumously awarded Liuzzo a Medal of Valor. Her death is cited as a factor that helped galvanize public opinion and congressional support, leading to the swift passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 just a few months later. Liuzzo is memorialized as a martyr of the movement. In 1991, the Southern Poverty Law Center erected a monument in her honor near the murder site. Her name is inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, and she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2019.

FBI misconduct and COINTELPRO

The case later revealed significant FBI misconduct. Informant Gary Rowe was a provocative agent who had participated in Klan violence prior to Liuzzo's murder. The FBI, under Director J. Edgar Hoover, launched a malicious defamation campaign against Liuzzo after her death, spreading false rumors about her character and mental state to discredit her activism. This smear campaign was part of the bureau's broader, secret COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) operations, which targeted civil rights leaders and activist groups. Congressional hearings in the 1970s exposed these activities, showing how the FBI prioritized undermining the movement over protecting its activists, even when it had prior knowledge of violent plots.