T-shirt worn by Teamsters on the 60th Anniversary of Viola Liuzzo’s death
March 25th 2025 will be the sixtieth anniversary of the murder/assassination of Viola Gregg Liuzzo. She was born the same year as Malcolm X and was assassinated a month after his assassination.
She was a civil rights advocate that was driving African Americans back and forth to vote in Selma Alabama when 4 members of the KKK drove up beside the vehicle she was driving with a nineteen year old African American in the passenger seat, and one of the klansman with the window down shot her twice in the head at point blank range. The black man in the passenger seat acted as though he was dead also so that he would not be killed when the klansmen got out of the car to see the results of their evil act .
What people need to understand about this courageous woman is that what she did most people including myself would not have the intrepidation to do. Liuzzo , who had been involved with the NAACP, saw the bloody Sunday massacre in Alabama, the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson protecting his mother from the vicious treatment and violence of the Alabama state police demonstrating for the right to vote.
This along with Malcolm X’s assassination and the slaughter of the white Reverend James Reeb , who put himself in front of a bulldozer fighting the racist evil of this country , outraged her and she left her home in Detroit and her husband and 5 children to go to Alabama to help fight American Apartheid.
What she did epitomized the real meaning of Jesus Nazareth, and her selfless act was a glaring example of “ bearing the cross.” Before she was murdered, Viola Liuzzo was spat at and cursed by whites in Alabama for daring to be in the company of black men.
She marched with Dr. King on March 21, 1965, and 3000 others across the Edmund Pettis Bridge for the right to vote against some of the most vicious, racist, and evil elements of white America in Alabama. After her assassination, J Edgar Hoover’s racism was in full effect, accusing Liuzzo of having extramarital affairs to diminish and discredit her unbelievable heroism.
Dr. King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Walter Reuther, and James Riddle Hoffa attended her funeral at the Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Detroit. Viola Gregg Liuzzo was just 39 years old.
The exact age that human rights icons like Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X were when they were assassinated. This white woman had more character and a true sense of Christianity than 99 percent of the people today, black, white, Latino, or otherwise combined.
To the family of Viola Liuzzo: Your mother/sister’s wife was a gift to all of us, especially those who understand the true meaning of Social Justice. Long live the spirit and memory of Viola Gregg Liuzzo. A soldier who fought for the rights of all human beings to live in dignity was gone too soon. She once said, about the barbaric treatment of black folks, “This is everybody’s problem. “ Jesus of Nazareth could not have said it better!
Cliff Jackson, Larchmont
