Viol Liuzzo

Viola Liuzzo, a young housewife and mother, devoted her time and her life to the Civil Rights Movement. Ku Klux Klan murderers ended her membership as a Freedom Rider volunteer during the Selma March and her life. My report will reflect the cause of her murder and how did her death and the mock trials of her killers cause a ripple effect across the civil rights community, judicial system, FBI and the White House. It will be discussed how her life would lead to the change of policies regarding the Voting Rights of the African Americans and why she is considered an important figure of the Civil Rights Movement.

Viola Gregg Liuzzo, the eldest daughter of a coal miner and a teacher was born in California, Pennsylvania on April 11, 1925. Due to the Great Depression the family moved to the South, first settling in Georgia then eventually moving to Tennessee where Viola’s mother Eva Gregg, would secure a teaching position. During Viola’s childhood, the family continued to move around in the southern states, never staying in one place to allow her to complete a full year of schooling in one location. Against the parent’s better judgment she was allowed to discontinue her education in the tenth grade and would soon marry her first husband of one day at the young age of sixteen. The family would move to Michigan during World War II where Viola would soon meet and marry her second husband, George Argyris, in 1943. Soon after she would meet her life long friend Sarah Evans, an African American woman, with whom she shared a mutual background of a southern childhood. Six years later, the couple would divorce and in 1951 she would marry the union organizer for the Teamsters, Anthony James Liuzzo and have three additional children.

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