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Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo (April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan. In March 1965 Liuzzo, then a housewife and mother of 5 with a history of local activism, heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr and traveled from Detroit, Michigan to Selma, Alabama in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Liuzzo participated in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot dead by members of the Ku Klux Klan. She was 39 years old. One of the four Klansmen in the car from which the shots were fired was Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant Gary Rowe. Rowe testified against the shooters and was moved and given an assumed name by the FBI. The FBI later leaked what were purported to be salacious details about Liuzzo which were never proved or substantiated in any way. In addition to other honors, Liuzzo's name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama created by Maya Lin. ==Early life== Liuzzo was born Viola Fauver Gregg in 1925, in California, Pennsylvania, the elder daughter of Eva Wilson, a teacher, and Heber Gregg, a coal miner and World War I veteran. The couple had one other daughter, Mary, in 1930. While on the job, Viola’s father was injured, and, during the Great Depression, could not provide for his family as a coal miner: the Greggs became solely dependent on Eva’s income. Work was very hard to come by for Mrs. Gregg, as she could only pick up sporadic, short-term, teaching positions. The family descended further into poverty and decided to move in pursuit of better job opportunities. The family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee when Viola was six. Having spent much of her childhood and adolescence poor in Tennessee, Viola experienced the segregated nature of the South firsthand. This would eventually have a powerful impact on Liuzzo’s activism. It was during her formative years Liuzzo realized the unjustness of segregation and racism, as she and her family, in similar conditions of great poverty, were still afforded social privilege and amenities denied to African Americans under the Jim Crow laws. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Viola Liuzzo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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