Thisįirst memorial march ended in the massacre viewed by Viola on TV.Ī few days later, Martin Luther King and the The civil rights activists then decided to hold a memorial marchįrom Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery on March 7. Held to bring attention to this violation of rights, andĪ small civil rights march ended in the death of Jim Jackson. She left for Selma alone in her car, despite her husband's concerns.Įffort to register black voters in Alabama, but hundreds were refused King's call was Viola Liuzzo, 39, a Detroit Horrified by the televised attacks of state troopers on peaceful marchersĪt the Edmund Pettus Bridge, went to Selma to add their voices Graduating with top honors she became a medical lab technician.Īfter March 7, 1965, many ordinary people, Viola resumed her education at Wayne State University, and upon Liuzzo legally adopted Viola's two daughters from her previous marriage and Viola married Anthony Liuzzo, a Teamster Union official from Detroit. In 1951, after two previous failed marriages (one at 16 lasted only a day),

Viola Fauver Gregg was born in Pennsylvania in 1925.Īs a child, she lived in Tennessee and Georgia. True Kindness assassinated - the housewife that moved a nation.

Martin Luther King, and his wife Coretta Scott King (center) in March, 1965. Thousands march to the state capitol in Alabama, led byĭr. Home of the Brave is a poignant look at the human cost of fomenting social change in the Land of the Free.Viola Liuzzo - civil rights activist assassinated by KKK in 1965 Combining archival footage with verité material and interviews, di Florio assesses the cost of Liuzzo’s passion for justice, her contribution to the advancement of civil rights, and the family’s turmoil resulting largely from futile attempts to seek justice. The murder trial and acquittal of the three arrested Klan members, a smear campaign mounted by the FBI against Liuzzo and the subsequent revelations of an FBI informer all coalesce to deepen the family members’ personal despair and their disillusionment with the U.S. Liuzzo was murdered near Selma, Alabama, in 1965 by the Ku Klux Klan.

But it is also an investigation into the haunting effect her death had on her family. On one level, this film is an examination of the death of Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit teamster’s wife, mother of five and activist during the civil rights crusade of the 1960s. The price of social commitment, not just to oneself but to the generations that follow, is compassionately explored in Paola di Florio’s Home of the Brave.

Home of the brave viola liuzzo