Remembering a White Casualty of the Civil Rights Struggle

photo: Reed Rudy

Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe, daughter of Viola

Details

Home of the Brave
Directed by Paola di Florio
Emerging Pictures October 27 through November 9 Emerging Cinemas at Theatre Row

Related Content

• Mohammed Wali Zazi, Dad of Subway Bomb Plotter Najibullah Zazi, Gets Prison
  February 10, 2012
• Anonymous's Fuck FBI Friday Campaign Hits Department of Homeland Security
  February 3, 2012
• BREAKING: Anonymous Claims to Take Down CIA Website
  February 10, 2012
• The FBI's Village Voice Files: 'It Is a Well-Known Hippie Paper'
  November 7, 2011
• I'm Discussing Oscars At The LGBT Center
  January 20, 2012

More About

• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Montgomery (Alabama)
• Crime and Law
• Law

This doc recounting the tragic story of Viola Liuzzo, the only white woman killed during the civil rights struggle, doubles as a narrative of the nascent women's movement. (A 39-year-old mother of five, she was gunned down after the 1965 march on Montgomery.) Born into Southern coal-mining poverty, Liuzzo had returned to school after having kids in Michigan, and it was with this newfound confidence that she decided to join MLK's march. In post-murder footage, her son tells a newscaster, "She wanted equal rights for everyone, no matter what the cost." We learn that Liuzzo's teamster husband was tracked by Hoover's FBI; that an informant rode with the Klan members who shot Viola (and may have pulled the trigger); that Viola's FBI file, alleging drug abuse and promiscuity, was larger than the Klan's. Director Paola di Florio finds that, frustrated by Fed stonewalling, one of Liuzzo's sons joined the Michigan Militia, and another withdrew to an Alabama shack he decorated with racist effigies. On a recent trip to the crime scene, a daughter finds a commemorative plaque caged to prevent defacement, underscoring the embattled nature of Viola's victories.