On today's date - March 25, 1965, Viola Liuzzo, a housewife from Detroit, drove alone to Alabama after seeing the televised attack at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She was driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery when she was killed by KKK. #Fresh #WomensHistoryMonth

Liuzzo, Viola

Viola Liuzzo was a civil rights activist who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan as she drove another activist from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, during the Selma Voting Rights March.

Born Viola Gregg in Pennsylvania on April 11, 1925, she was raised in poverty in Georgia and Tennessee during the Great Depression, where she witnessed segregation first-hand. She later moved to Michigan, married Teamster Anthony Liuzzo in 1950, and attended Wayne State University. She became active in the Detroit chapter of the NAACP.

A middle-class, white mother of five children, Liuzzo was spurred to join the efforts of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the marchers after seeing televised footage of hundreds of peaceful protestors being clubbed and tear-gassed by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. Soon afterward, she drove her Oldsmobile 800 miles to Selma. On March 25, she was driving 19-year-old Leroy Moton, an African American, to Montgomery, when a car carrying four KKK members began chasing them. The KKK members’ car pulled alongside Liuzzo’s, and they shot her in the head, killing her instantly. Moton was not hit and survived by playing dead.

Within 24 hours of the murder, President Lyndon Johnson went on television to announce the arrests of the KKK members – Eugene Thomas, Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., William Orville Eaton, and Gary Thomas Rowe – and demanded an immediate Congressional investigation of the KKK. Rowe was protected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as one of its paid informants and testified against the other men. The KKK members were all acquitted in the Alabama courts, despite eyewitness testimony and ballistics evidence, but found guilty of violating Viola Liuzzo’s civil rights by a federal grand jury and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Liuzzo’s funeral in Detroit was attended by many dignitaries, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Walter Reuther. Yet after her death her reputation was slandered, as false accusations were made about her morality, dedication to her family, and drug use. In 1978, documents released through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover masterminded the smear campaign, fearful of the FBI’s culpability of informant Gary Rowe in the murder. Liuzzo’s children were threatened and taunted, and a cross was burned on their lawn, prompting the need for round-the-clock guard for the next two years.

https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/liuzzo-viola-0

ShEs NoT TraNsPhobIc NamE OnE TraNspHobiC ThiNg She HaS SaiD oR DonE

10 yrs into Congress, I like to help the freshmen where I can. Noticed my pal @RepDanGoldman
has nothing..nada..zero on his walls. So I decorated his office with some of my extra pictures. Of me.

INBOX: Whitmer has officially signed the Right to Work repeal. The first state to do that in 58 years.

Detroit’s former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is apart of the largest Republican conference outside of the RNC this summer. He is big on “preserving the family structure.” https://familypolicyalliance.com/soconcon2023/

He spoke about his fiancee Tuesday while discussing his life at The Citadel of Praise Church.

"Latisia, I met her when she was 12 years old," he said. "This is the thing you all should know. When I came and taught, I'm coming out of college, I get the first job I ever had and they gave me a class. And there is a little girl with a bunch of east side kids at Marcus Garvey Academy on the east side of Detroit."

He was a teacher back then. She would later work in his administration but he said they barely had any contact. Then in 2018, while locked up in prison, she came to see him.

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/former-mayor-kwame-kilpatrick-to-get-married-at-detroit-church-this-weekend

DETROIT – An international climate conference will come to Michigan this summer for a series of TED Talks meant to accelerate environmental action on a global scale.

TED Countdown will host its second climate action summit from July 11-14 in Detroit. The event will feature TED Talks on real-world climate solutions and immersive field trips with local innovators pursuing sustainability.

The guest list will feature those among the world’s top thinkers and innovators on climate solutions.

The four-day climate conference will include hundreds of participants attending more than 40 TED Talks, interviews, and performances, as well as breakout sessions on topics like regenerative agriculture and how to fund climate adaptation.

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2023/03/ted-talks-global-climate-summit-coming-to-michigan-this-summer.html