Viola Fauver Liuzzo was an American civil rights activist in Detroit, Michigan. She was known for going to Alabama in March 1965 to support the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights. On March 25, 1965, she was shot dead by three Ku Klux Klan members while driving activists between the cities and transportation.
Picture of Gregg, 1949
Memorial to Viola Liuzzo in Lowndes County, Alabama
Selma to Montgomery marches
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South. By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the civil rights movement.
Alabama Highway Patrol troopers attack civil rights demonstrators outside Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.
Police watch marchers turn around on Tuesday, March 9, 1965.
Monument for James Reeb in Selma, Alabama
The third Selma Civil Rights March frontline. From far left: John Lewis, an unidentified nun, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Bunche, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Frederick Douglas Reese. Second row: Joseph Ellwanger is standing behind the nun; between King and Bunche is Rabbi Maurice Davis. Heschel later wrote, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."
