Nice story about Viola Liuzzo for those of us who remember,

[marybourg]

and those who don't:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/12/15/a-white-mother-went-to-alabama-to-fight-for-civil-rights-the-klan-killed-her-for-it/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_retropolis-liuzzo%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f1f9e5737a1e

It was her face that got me.

The woman who gazed from the photo in the Gary Post Tribune in April 1965 was blond and girlishly glamorous, wearing dark — I assumed red — lipstick. To my young eyes, nothing about her face belonged in an article about civil rights, or could be remotely connected to the movement-inspired mayhem my family often saw on the TV news.

********************

Just last month, five decades after her death, Liuzzo — the only white woman killed in the Civil Rights movement — was awarded the Fred L. Shuttlesworth award from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on its 25th anniversary. Singer/activist Harry Belafonte and Birmingham’s first black mayor, Richard Arrington Jr., also were honored.

Few doubt that our nation has evolved in ways the child I once was couldn’t have dreamed. Yet I can’t help noticing how . . . small some Americans are becoming, or how divided some leaders are encouraging us to be. Where’s the Christian compassion so many of us subscribe to, that Viola so clearly possessed? Consider what confronts today’s children of color on the news: homegrown Nazis, a president calling athletes “sons of bitches” for protesting police having less regard for their families than they do for white ones, and the Border Patrol seeking to deport a 10-year-old Mexican girl with cerebral palsy — who’d lived in Texas since she was 3 months old — immediately after emergency surgery. Do these kids feel hated? Are they as astounded as I was that a white person — think Heather Heyer, mowed down in Charlottesville — could die for supporting them?

[Kath2]

1. Thank you.

Heartbreaking,

[SeattleVet]

2. Yes, thank you...

what a very powerful story!

[jaysunb]

3. Thanks for posting.

She is an unsung heroine of that struggle.

[More_Cowbell]

4. I'd never heard of her

Thanks very much for posting. I love that her daughter feels that her mom and the other people who sacrificed are "still alive" there.

[Rhiannon12866]

5. I remember learning about her in school and her story stuck with me.

Thanks for the reminder and the post.

[marybourg]

6. Good to know her story is being taught

in (at least one) school. She made a very large impression on me, as I was a young mother at the time also, and would never have had the courage to do what she did. I promised, however, that I would be in the fight for the long haul, and I have been.

[Rhiannon12866]

7. I also remember that he explained how George Wallace hung on to the governorship

By running for alternate terms with his wife, Lurleen. I guess Mr. Wadach was a champion of civil rights. I didn't realize it at the time, but these lessons stuck with me and I appreciate it even more now. Kudos to you for fighting the good fight, too!