Victim Viola Liuzzo

Civil rights activist, housewife and mother of five Viola Liuzzo gave her life for her beliefs in 1965 on a lonely Deep South highway.

Liuzzo, 39, heard the appeals made by Martin Luther King for people of good will to rally for the cause of racial integration, and she told her family that she wanted to do her part.

One of her jobs was to help transport protesters and workers between Montgomery and Selma, Alabama. On March 25, 1965, she and her 19-year-old co-worker Leroy Moton had dropped off their passengers and were returning for another load when they were seen by a car peopled by four members of the Ku Klux Klan. A high-speed chase ensued.

Finally, the KKK car pulled alongside Liuzzo's vehicle, and Klansman Collie Leroy Wilkins hit Luizzo with two bullets to the head, killing her instantly. Moton grabbed the wheel, stepped on the brakes and brought the car to rest in a ditch. He played dead and got away with it.

One of the passengers in the KKK car, Gary Thomas Rowe, turned out to be an FBI informant. Another KKK passenger soon died of a heart attack. Wilkins and Eugene Thomas were tried for murder but were acquitted.

Mrs. Luizzo's murder horrified most Americans, and her sacrifice helped prepare the way for passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.