A revolting example of racism Old South style was 21-year-old Collie Leroy Wilkins, convicted of shooting and killing civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo in 1965.
Liuzzo was the only white woman killed in the protest era of the 1960s. She left her home in Detroit to aid in Martin Luther King's efforts to end racial segregation. Demonstrators had marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to demand that black citizens be allowed to register and vote.
Liuzzo and African American teen LeRoy Moton had driven demonstrators back to Selma and were headed to Montgomery to pick up more when they were overtaken on a dark stretch of highway by a car occupied by four Ku Klux Klansmen.
According to the testimony of the other three men, including one who was an FBI informer, Wilkins did the shooting.
An Alabama jury deadlocked, and on retrial, Wilkins was found not guilty. Shown on television news, he looked pleased with himself, but not for long. In federal court, he was found guilty of depriving Liuzzo of her civil rights and was sentenced to 10 years.
He served seven years, then worked the rest of his life as a mechanic. Wilkins died in 1994.
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