Klan Murders A White Woman Who Dared To March With Blacks for Voting Rights in Alabama

 

Viola Liuzzo in a family portrait and working with marchers in Selma, AL 

Lowndes County, Alabama, March 25, 1965— A Detroit mother was murdered by the Klan on this day because she believed in equality and justice and came to Alabama to march with Blacks protesting for their civil rights.

Viola Liuzzo was described by her husband as someone “who fought for everyone’s rights. She was a champion for the underdog.” Liuzzo had come to Selma to help marchers in any way she could. She had told her husband, “its everyone’s fight,” the evening she left to drive to Alabama to help protesters in the Selma to Montogomery March.

Liuzzo grew up in segregated Tennessee, and this formed her views on civil rights. An active member of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, she was familiar with organized protests and the problems in Alabama. She had left Detroit after witnessing the events of “Bloody Sunday,” on March 7^th, when police and vigilantes attacked Black marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to stop them from marching to Montogomery to protest their inability to vote due to poll taxes and poll tests.

On March 25^th, the protest had climaxed, and demonstrators were breaking up in too small groups and looking for ways home. Liuzzo agreed to shuttle people back to Selma and was riding with a young Black man, 19-year-old Leroy Moton. He had agreed to help drive if she needed it. After dropping some people in Selma Liuzzo and Moton were headed back to Montgomery on State Highway 80 when they picked up a tail.

Earlier in the day, Ku Klux Klan members had gathered at Silver Moon Café. They had been keeping the protest under surveillance under orders from their Klavern in Birmingham. When they left Selma to head back to Montgomery, they saw Liuzzo’s green Oldsmobile. The car had Michigan plates, and Moton was sitting in the front seat with Liuzzo. This triggered them because it was everything they hated about the civil rights movement, outsiders, and race mixing. So, they followed. Moton said that Liuzzo was singing “WE Shall Overcome” when the car caught them, even though they were going down the two-lane road at nearly 100 miles an hour. Even at the speed, the Klansmen pulled alongside and shot into the car, instantly killing Liuzzo, the car wrecked knocking Moton out. When he woke up, he flagged down a passing truck and notified the authorities in Selma.

Within 24 hours, President Lyndon Johnson had appeared on television to report the arrest of three Klan members for Liuzzo’s murder.  Eugene Thomas, Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., and William Orville Eaton had all been arrested. A fourth man, Gary Rowe, had not been since he was an FBI informant.

Rowe went on to testify against the men in three trials. Although he had been recruited to infiltrate the Klan in 1959, he was also being recruited by the Klan, in his time as an informant Rowe hade been under superstition many times including for providing the dynamite or even that he built the bombs that killed four little girls in the 1963 the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham. Rowe, though, was protected by the FBI on orders from director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover took the civil rights movement and protests personally and felt certain that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent trained to disrupt America. Hoover was concerned that the high-profile murder could lead the press to find out about Rowe, and that would make the FBI culpable in not just the murder of Liuzzo but other activities.

Liuzzo’s body was flown back to Detroit on the private plane of Teamster’s president, Jimmy Hoffa, and met by her family. Liuzzo’s husband was a business manager for the Teamsters in Detroit at the time of the murder. The funeral was held on March 30^th at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Detroit. It was attended by Dr. King, future congressman John Lewis, and NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins. Also, by Michigan Lt. Governor William G. Milliken. Hoffa and United Auto Workers Union President Walter Reuther.

Despite the high-profile individuals at the funeral or perhaps because of it, crosses were burned the next night in Detroit, including on the Liuzzo’s lawn. For at least the next two years, the family had security at their home both extended police presence and private security. Despite this, the Liuzzo children were bullied and taunted at school.

This was made worse as trial preparations began, and the Klan, the lawyer for the three accused men, and the FBI all seemed to work in tandem to smear Liuzzo’s reputation. Rumors and stories were spread that Mrs. Liuzzo had been a heroin user and had abandoned her family to have sexual relations with Black men.

At the state trials, these rumors and the bias present in the jury resulted in a hung jury in the accused's first trial after just 6 hours. A second trial led to a verdict of innocent by an all-White male jury. If left at that level, there would be no justice. Fortunately, President Johnson’s Department of Justice decided to bring federal charges against the three Klan members for conspiring to violate the civil rights of Mrs. Liuzzo. They were convicted and each sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The murder of Viola Liuzzo became a transcendent moment in the Civil Rights cause. She became a martyr for the movement, and it was her murder that led Johnson to declare war on the Klan and bring Hoover to heel by ordering the director to engage in enforcing the Civil Rights Act. It is also believed by most historians that Liuzzo’s murder was the push to get the Civil Rights Act passed.

In the aftermath of the murder Leroy Moton became an agitator and hard worker for the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Council to help to register voters in Illinois, Michigan, and Georgia. In interviews, he said that for years he had guilt and wondered why he survived when a mother of 5 didn’t. He died quietly at age 78 in 2023 at his son’s home in Hartford, Connecticut.

Rowe would become a highly controversial figure for the rest of his life. He was subpoenaed to appear before a Congressional Committee. He was prepared to make the FBI the wrongdoers in his life and testified that they never attempted to stop his violence against Blacks. He received immunity and went into the witness protection program even though he acknowledged attacking freedom riders and killing a Black man. He wrote a book about his time undercover that was turned into a TV Movie in 1979.

The Liuzzo family sued the FBI for the death of Liuzzo and associated damages. On May 27, 1983, Judge Charles Wycliffe Joiner rejected the claims, saying there was "no evidence the FBI was in any type of joint venture with Rowe or conspiracy against Mrs. Liuzzo.” 

In the decades since Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe, her brother Anthony and sister Sally have taken every opportunity to tell the world of the heroism and compassion of their mother, as well as the pain experienced by their family following her death and the subsequent smear campaign against her character. They have dedicated their lives to destroying the image Hoover had tried to create.

 

Leroy Moton in 1965 and 2023

Sources:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/03/27/101535542.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

https://www.wvtm13.com/article/alabama-montgomery-selma-viola-liuzzo-kkk-civil-rights/63907002

https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/liuzzo-viola-0

https://www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/texts/viola-liuzzo

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/local/selma50/2015/03/08/liuzzos-children-know-played-pivotal-role/24631939/

 

 

The Petway Family: Freedom Flyers Against Segregation

The Petway Family and Cecil Thomas mug shots from July 24, 1961

July 24, 1961 – Jackson, Mississippi, The summer of 1961 is the summer of the “Freedom Riders” when hundreds of protesters, both Black and White, descended on the Southern states to try and break the hold of Jim Cros and segregation on the states most determined to keep segregation as the way of life. The Supreme Court had ruled in the case of Boynton V. Virginia that laws dictating segregation on interstate travel were unconstitutional and the Freedom Riders were determined to ensure that the law was enforced. Everyone who took part had an individual story of those protests, from the tragic events like the mob beatings of Freedom Riders in the cities of Anniston and Montgomery Alabama to the mundane of arrests and hearings.

On this day one family attempted to desegregate the municipal airport in Jackson, Mississippi. The Reverend Matthew Petway and his two children, daughter Kredelle, 20, and son Alphonso, 16. They had flown in from the segregated airport in Montgomery, but the intention was to test the law in Mississippi. Once at the airport they got off the plane and headed for the White-only restaurant, only to find it closed. Then they noticed the heavy law enforcement presence. So, the city knew they were coming and decided to try to preempt the protest. The family of three headed for the Whites only water fountain which was when police stepped in and arrested them for breaking the peace. Cecil Thomas, a YMCA secretary in Berkeley, California was also arrested. Thomas’ son Steven and friend Tom Schooley were also on the flight but did not enter the airport and were not arrested.

Reverend Petway had been an activist since he was discharged from the army after World War Two. He then settled in Pensacola Florida and married. In 1958 He took on the role of pastor at the AME Zion Church in Montgomery. In the spring of 1961, he was approached by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Ralph Abernathy about doing a “Freedom Flight” with his two children.

Reverend Petway’s daughter Kredelle was 20 and a student at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida. Kredelle had been very active with the student union there and was involved in protests for equal rights. She had been exposed to many of the tactics of law enforcement used in Alabama, fire hoses, and attack dogs. She had also been arrested. In Montgomery, she worked with her father and brother as part of the Montgomery Improvement Association’s voter registration campaign. 

Alphonso Petway was 16 at the time and had not been to a protest actively yet but attended meetings with his father and had experienced racism as a student in Florida where he had to walk past a White school to get to his and had often been verbally attacked and had objects thrown at him. He also was protecting his family, while his father was out of town, from the Klan.

After being arrested Reverend Petway, Alphonso, and Thomas Cecil were taken to the Hinds County Jail and Kredelle to the women’s jail. The family was separated for two days before a bond hearing and then another day before being released. The Pettways felt fortunate they said because they did not experience the violence so many others did. The experience did reinforce their will to see things change, particularly for Alphonso. He has said in interviews that the “stupid illogic of segregation,” bothers him still.

A year after the arrests all charges were dropped. The Petway family didn’t end what they were determined to do though. Reverend Petway worked on different civil rights campaigns until his death in 1972. Kredelle went back to college to finish the semester and at that time got tear-gassed. She married and had three children. In 1967 she went to work at the IRS and started the subtle work of recruiting more African Americans to work in the service and push them upward in the administration. Alphonso followed his father’s footsteps and became a pastor. He also continued to work with the NAACP and the Poor People’s Campaign. He’s still actively involved in voting rights. 

While men like Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett tried to keep segregation alive  the  Commerce Department and the Justice Department used the Interstate Commerce Act and associated court rulings to end segregated bus services and segregated airports in 1962 and in 1962 after two civil suits.

Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/desegregation-airports-american-south

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2020/03/16/kredelle-petway-womans-view-freedom-rider-flight-and-life-service-followed/5021930002/

https://breachofpeace.com/blog/?p=9

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/06/04/freedom-flyer-alphonso-petway-reflects-1961-bus-attacks-jackson-mississippi-airport-arrest/1202293001/

 

The Rape Of Recy Taylor and The White Wall Of Injustice

Feb. 14, 1945, White men in Alabama were of the opinion that Black women were basically all whores to do what they felt like with, or rather one could believe that as on this day a second all White male grand jury voted unanimously to not indict six men for the gang rape of Recy Taylor a Black woman from Abbeville, Alabama.

On the night of Sept. 3 1944 Taylor was walking home from a revival meeting, with two friends near her own home when 7 men in a green Chevrolet pulled up to her and forced her into their car, one of the men, Herbert Lovett, had a shotgun he aimed at her two friends. They took Taylor to a remote wooded area and six of them raped her.

Her friends had already spread the alarm to her family and the Negro community so when the men threw Taylor from their car a search party was already looking for her. Disoriented from the assault Taylor, then 24 mother and sharecropper with her husband, wandered the roads looking for direction and safety.

Taylor’s friend Fannie Daniels had tried to find the sheriff but he wasn’t around so she was able to get the former chief of police Will Cook and Taylor’s father Benny Corbitt to go looking for her, they found her near the local highway at about 3 AM and took her back to Cook’s workshop where her husband and Daniels waited. Henry County Sheriff, George Gamble had also been found in the interim and was there. Taylor bravely recounted the entire experience, while she couldn’t identify the men the car was well known because of its color.

Sheriff Gamble knew who owned the car and went to pick him up. The young man was Hugo Wilson. When the sheriff brought him back to Cook’s store, Taylor identified Wilson as one of the rapists. Wilson was taken to jail and confessed to participating in the attack. He gave up the names of the other men including U.S. Army Private Herbert Lovett, Billy Howerton, Dillard York, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper, and Robert Gamble. Wilson though insisted that because they paid her, their kidnapping and brutalization could not be considered rape. The sheriff released Wilson and never brought the other men in.

Even though the sheriff appeared to have no intention of actually making arrests the rapists and other Whites still attempted to intimidate Taylor and her family, they firebombed her home and burned the porch and front room. So they moved in with her father and siblings. Her father began spending his nights in a tree with a shotgun watching the house only sleeping after the sun had risen.

The NAACP chapter in Montgomery heard of the terrible assault and treatment of Taylor and sent Rosa Parks to investigate the case. Parks interviewed Taylor, Daniels, and her son, Taylor’s husband, father, and Will Cook. Parks also came under surveillance by Deputy Sheriff Lewey Corbitt a distant cousin of Taylor who was White. Taylor followed Parks around Abbeville and drove by the older Corbitt’s home several times each day. Finally, Sheriff Gamble himself had decided he was not willing to allow outsiders to influence anyone, he stormed into the Corbitt home and told Parks to leave, “I don’t want any troublemakers here in Abbeville,” he said. “If you don’t go, I’ll lock you up.”

Parks returned to Montgomery and started promptly launched the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. The committee flooded the South with fliers “decrying white attacks on black women,” according to the Black newspaper the Chicago Defender.

A correspondent for the Defender, Fred Atwater, arrived in Abbeville and reported that the lawyer representing the suspects in the case had offered $600 to Willie Guy Taylor to silence his wife. “Nigger — ain’t $600 enough for raping your wife,” the story quoted the lawyer saying. The six defendants were willing to pay $100 each “if Recy Taylor would forget.”

She refused to bow and pressed charges against the men. A grand jury was brought together but they basically ignored the witness statements and on Oct, 9 unanimously voted to dismiss the case.

Nationwide outrage was building in the case and the NCCAP pressed with protests and letters, and they got the attention of Alabama Governor  Chauncey Sparks. Sparks made a statement on Dec. 18^th that he was ordering a full investigation of the matter. This was followed up by Alabama Attorney General William McQueen sending two of the lead investigators to Abbeville and interviewing everyone involved. McQueen stated there were no legal issues about this just because one grand jury did not bring back a case.

Despite these efforts when a second grand jury was impaneled, it was once again 12 White men and they did what White men did in the Jim Crow South and dismissed the case.

After this second failure to indict people began to move on to other events. While there were still groups attempting to keep the focus on Taylor’s case and they did raise some money by June there just was no longer any political motivation or will to continue.

No longer feeling safe or comfortable in Abbeville Taylor, her husband, and daughter moved to Montgomery for a few months living with Parks. They then moved to central Florida and worked in the orange groves. By 1960 Taylor and her husband had separated and in 1961 Mr. Taylor died. Tragically Taylor’s only child, her daughter, died in a car accident in 1967.

The case drifted into obscurity for decades until historian Danielle L. McGuire included Taylor’s story in her book entitled, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance” in 2011. The book led to the Alabama State Legislature issuing a full apology to Taylor:

“That we acknowledge the lack of prosecution for crimes committed against Recy Taylor by the government of the State of Alabama. That we declare such failure to act was, and is, morally abhorrent and repugnant, and that we do hereby express profound regret for the role played by the government of the State of Alabama in failing to prosecute the crimes.”

Taylor died in 2017

 

Sources:

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, by the historian Danielle L. McGuire. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/obituaries/recy-taylor-alabama-rape-victim-dead.html

https://www.thelily.com/when-recy-taylor-was-gang-raped-in-1944-no-arrests-were-made-the-naacp-sent-rosa-parks-to-investigate/

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/recy-taylor

 

Battle To Desegregate Montgomery Airport

 

Jan.4, 1962, The city of Montgomery, Alabama decided to go to great lengths to make sure White travelers and Black Travelers would not intersect after a federal judge’s order to desegregate the city’s municipal airport Dannelly Field.

U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnston issued an order that prohibited the city commissioners and airport restaurant operators from barring anyone of any race from using any airport facilities. Johnston also ordered all the signs declaring race-specific facilities, “Negro Fountain” or “White Restroom,” to be taken down.

In response, city attorney Calvin Whitesell said that obviously, they would appeal to the Appellate Court because segregation was the best option. Also, he ordered all the chairs in waiting rooms would be removed, restrooms locked, and water fountains shut off. He added that the restaurant would be closed rather than desegregated.

While this appealed to the strong segregationist segment of the city the airport had military contracts and the businessmen of Montgomery were already dealing with some ongoing sit-ins so the chamber told Whitehall and the city commissioners that they would not back the move to shut down the airport’s facilities and seating area. Also, the Chamber had led the financing of the two-year-old terminal and felt ownership over the airport

Sources: 

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/desegregation-airports-american-south

https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-city-of-montgomery

Rosa Parks Day, 67th anniversary of Beginning of Montgomery Bus Boycott

December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for disobeying the bus segregation laws of the city