Viola Liuzzo died fighting for civil rights. Her daughter Mary, kept her story alive.
Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe dedicated her life to teaching nonviolence
Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe was 17 when the Ku Klux Klan murdered her mother.
It was March 1965 when Viola Liuzzo traveled from her home on Detroit’s west side to Selma, Alabama, to join Martin Luther King Jr.’s voting rights crusade following Bloody Sunday.
Viola called home every night to talk to her family. Her kids marched around the house singing, “We Shall Overcome,” when she told them the march was a success, and she would be coming home the next day.
But before Viola could return to her five children, she was shot to death by Klansmen while driving Leroy Moton, a Black civil rights volunteer, back to Selma.
Moton, covered in Viola's bl