Viola Liuzzo

Although the State of Alabama was unable to secure a murder conviction, Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas were charged in federal court with conspiracy to intimidate African Americans under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction civil rights statute.

On December 3, the trio was found guilty by an all-white, all-male jury, and were sentenced to ten years in prison, a landmark in Southern legal history.

Rowe testified that Wilkins had fired two shots into Liuzzo on the order of Thomas, and was placed in the witness protection program by the FBI.

In an effort to deflect attention from having employed Rowe as an informant, the FBI produced disinformation for politicians and the press, stating that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party, heroin addict, and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African-Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Liuzzo's involvement in the civil rights movement was scrutinized and she was condemned by various racist organizations.

Viola Fauver Liuzzo (née Gregg; April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was an American civil rights activist.

Viola Fauver Gregg was born on April 11, 1925, in the small town of California, Pennsylvania, the elder daughter of Eva Wilson, a teacher, and Heber Ernest Gregg, a coal miner and World War I veteran.

Her father left school in the eighth grade but taught himself to read.

Her mother had a teaching certificate from Southwestern PA Normal School (now California University of Pennsylvania).

The couple had one other daughter, Rose Mary, in 1930.

While on the job, Heber's right hand was blown off in a mine explosion and, during the Great Depression, the Greggs became solely dependent on Eva's income.

Work was very hard to come by for Mrs. Gregg, as she could pick up only sporadic, short-term teaching positions.

The family descended further into poverty and decided to move from Georgia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Eva found a teaching position, when Viola was six.

The family was very poor and lived in one-room shacks with no running water.

The schools Liuzzo attended did not have adequate supplies and the teachers were too busy to give extra attention to children in need.

Because the family moved so often, Liuzzo never began and ended the school year in the same place.

Having spent much of her childhood and adolescence poor in Tennessee, she experienced the segregated nature of the South firsthand.

This would have a powerful impact on her activism.

Tensions between whites and blacks were very high there and the early 1940s saw violence and rioting.

Witnessing these horrific ordeals was a major motivator that influenced Viola's future civil rights work.

In 1941, the Gregg family moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, where her father sought a job assembling bombs at the Ford Motor Co. Viola's strong-willed nature led her to drop out of high school after one year and elope at the age of 16.

The marriage did not last, and she returned to her family.

Two years later, the Gregg family moved to Detroit, Michigan, which was starkly segregated by race.

In 1943, she married George Argyris, the manager of a restaurant where she worked.

They had two children, Penny and Evangeline Mary, and divorced in 1949.

She later married Anthony Liuzzo, a Teamsters union business agent.

They had three children: Tommy, Anthony Jr., and Sally.

Viola sought to return to school, and attended the Carnegie Institute in Detroit, Michigan.

She then enrolled part-time at Wayne State University in 1962.

In 1964, she began attending the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit and joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

A large part of Viola's activism, particularly with the NAACP, was due to her close friendship with an African American woman, Sarah Evans.

After initially meeting in a grocery store where Liuzzo worked as a cashier, the two kept in touch.

Evans eventually became Liuzzo's housekeeper while still maintaining a close, friendly relationship in which they shared similar views, including support for the civil rights movement.

In the aftermath of Liuzzo's death, Evans would go on to become the permanent caretaker of Liuzzo's five young children.

Liuzzo so passionately believed in the fight for civil rights that she helped organize Detroit protests, attended civil rights conferences, and worked with the NAACP.

In March 1965, Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Liuzzo participated in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics.

At the age of 39, while driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was fatally hit by shots fired from a pursuing car containing Ku Klux Klan members Collie Leroy Wilkins Jr., William Orville Eaton, Eugene Thomas, and Gary Thomas Rowe, the last of whom was actually an undercover informant working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In 1983, the Liuzzo family filed a lawsuit against the FBI after learning about the FBI's activities, but the suit was dismissed.

In addition to other honors, Liuzzo's name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, created by Maya Lin.