Medal of Honor Recipient: Viola Liuzzo

Описание: Medal of Honor Recipient: Viola Liuzzo

In many respects, Viola Gregg Liuzzo was a very ordinary everydaykid born to a struggling white family, looking for work and opportunities in the South. She had no reason to concern herself with Civil Rights or the injustices all around her. Although poor and white, she was still aware that she had privilege not available to blacks. She was aware of the injustice of segregation and racism which formed the fabric of society in the South.

Looking for better opportunities, her family moved to Michigan in 1941.She eventually went on to Wayne State University, began attending the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, and joined the NAACP. A close friendship with a black woman, Sarah Evans, further solidified her commitment to the civil rights movement. She was horrified and deeply moved by media images of "Bloody Sunday" and others coming out of the south. After hearing Martin Luther King call for people of all faiths to come and help, saying that the struggle "was everybody's fight", Viola told her husband she was going to Selma, left her five children in the care of family and friends, and volunteered her services and her 1963 Oldsmobile to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She participated in the peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery between March 21 and March 25 and transported volunteers and marchers to and from airports, bus terminals, and train stations. As she drove a 19-year-old African American named Leroy Martin, the car was overtaken by four Klansmen in a car who shot directly at her, hitting her twice in the head, and killing her instantly.

The courage, conviction, and activism of this "ordinary, everyday person" helped to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. There is a stone marker on Highway 80 at the spot in Alabama where she was murdered. It is inscribed, "In memory of our sister Viola Liuzzo who gave her life in the struggle for the right to vote on March 25, 1965". In 2013 Viola Liuzzo was awarded the Ford Freedom Humanitarian Award an honor given only to one other person - Nelson Mandela.