Document text
Documentary on Liuzzo shows at film festival By PAUL FATTIG,Mail Tribune Mar 20, 2005 12:00 AM A A The movie poster for "Home of the Brave'. — — — — Home of the Brave, a documentary about the murder of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, will be shown at the annual Ashland Independent Film Festival beginning March 31. Directed by Paolo di Florio, the documentary was released at the Sundance Film Festival last year. During the festival at the Varsity Theatre in Ashland, Home of the Brave will be shown at 3:40 p.m. March 31, 12:40 p.m. April — and 6:40 p.m. April 3. For additional information on the film festival, call 488-3823 or check out . In the film, daughter Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe of Grants Pass retraces her mother's steps from Detroit to Alabama, where her mother was killed on March 25, 1965. — Four of Viola Liuzzo's five children participated in making the documentary. Helping with the documentary was a tremendous healing experience for us, Lilleboe said. It has been a long drawn-out battle with my family to right some of the wrongs and restore the mom we had. With this movie, I was able to get my voice back, she added. I don't want to sit and be quiet anymore. Viola Liuzzo was born on April 11, 1925, in California, Penn. After her father lost his hand along with his job in a mining accident, the family traveled south into Tennessee and Georgia, where they witnessed poverty and racial discrimination. Settling in Detroit during World War II, Viola married, had two children, Penny and Mary, divorced and eventually remarried. She and husband Anthony James Liuzzo, a Teamsters official, had three children, Tommy, Anthony Jr. and Sally. Penny and Mary were legally adopted by their stepfather. Viola Liuzzo became a medical laboratory assistant, then began studying at Wayne State University. She also became active in the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The film captures the mounting tension of racial turmoil during the early 1960s as peaceful marchers demonstrating for voting rights were beaten by police in Alabama. After participating with daughter Penny and 250 Wayne students in a sympathy march for the protesters, Liuzzo told her husband she was going to Selma for a week to join in the march to Montgomery to help the voting rights effort. When the march was over, Liuzzo and civil rights worker Leroy Moton, then 19, began shuttling marchers to the airport. After dropping five passengers off, Viola was returning Moton to Montgomery when four Ku Klux Klan members saw the white woman and black man riding in the same car. They followed the car for about 20 miles, pulled alongside and shot her, killing her instantly. One of the KKK members, an FBI informant, was suspected in the shooting. Moton was uninjured. The following day, President Lyndon B. Johnson called Liuzzo's husband. I don't think she died in vain because this is going to be a battle, all out as far as I'm concerned, he said. Her husband replied, My wife died for a sacred battle, the rights of humanity. ... She took a quote from Abraham Lincoln that all men are created equal and that's the way she believed. While speaking at San Francisco's Grace Episcopal Cathedral on March 28 Martin Luther King Jr. said of Liuzzo, If physical death is the price some must pay to save us and our white brothers from eternal death of the spirit, then no sacrifice could be more redemptive. The NAACP sponsored a memorial service for Liuzzo at the People's Community Church in Detroit on March 29, drawing 1,500 people, including Rosa Parks. And on March 30, a high requiem Mass was held for her at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Detroit. King was among the 750 people attending. None of the KKK members was convicted of murder. The FBI informant testified for the prosecution and received immunity. The other three eventually were given 10-year sentences for violation of Liuzzo's civil rights. A civil lawsuit by the Liuzzo family attempting to get the FBI to acknowledge complicity in her death failed. The movie poster for 'Home of the Brave'. - Mail Tribune images