All-White Jury Convicts KKK Members for Murder of Viola Liuzzo
Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights volunteer from Detroit, Michigan, was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members near Selma, Alabama, on March 25, 1965. On this day, three of her killers were convicted on federal charges. There was much discussion over the fact that it was an all-white jury.
Liuzzo was a 39-year-old mother of five children who had been active in civil rights issues in Detroit. She had traveled to Selma to participate in the famous Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march (March 25, 1965).
The FBI was complicit in her murder in at least two ways. FBI informant Gary Rowe was one of the four KKK members in the car from which the bullets were fired. He did nothing to stop the murder. And after her death, the FBI secretly leaked unflattering information about Liuzzo’s personal life, most of which was fabricated by the Bureau.
Watch the documentary on Viola Liuzzo, Home of the Brave (2004): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSrRdmxlQto
Read: Mary Stanton, From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo (1998)
And also: Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, The Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo (2005)
Learn about the KKK today: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan