Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo, a 39-year-old white woman, was a mother of five from Detroit, Michigan, who traveled to Alabama in March 1965 to participate in the Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. On the night of March 25, 1965, after the successful conclusion of the march, Liuzzo was shuttling fellow activists from Montgomery back to Selma in her Oldsmobile. Accompanying her was a young African American man named Leroy Moton.
As they drove along Highway 80, a car carrying four members of the Ku Klux Klan began to pursue them.
The Klansmen, identified as Collie Leroy Wilkins Jr., William Orville Eaton, Eugene Thomas, and Gary Thomas Rowe, chased Liuzzo's vehicle at high speeds. Near a stretch of road in Lowndes County, they pulled alongside her car, and at least two of the men opened fire. Liuzzo was struck in the head and killed instantly, her car veering into a ditch. Moton, who was covered in her blood, survived by pretending to be dead when the attackers returned to inspect the vehicle. The Klansmen then drove away, satisfied that both occupants were dead.
Within 24 hours of the murder, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced on national television that four suspects had been arrested. One of the men, Gary Thomas Rowe, was revealed to be an FBI informant who had been in the car with the shooters and subsequently served as a witness for the prosecution. The other three Klansmen, Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas, were indicted on state murder charges in Alabama. Despite Rowe's eyewitness testimony, the all-white, all-male juries in the state trials either failed to reach a verdict or acquitted the defendants.
Following the failures in the state courts, the federal government charged Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas with conspiring to violate Viola Liuzzo's civil rights. In a landmark case for the Civil Rights Movement, all three men were found guilty in a federal court and sentenced to ten years in prison. William Eaton died of a heart attack before serving his sentence. Collie Wilkins served seven years, and Eugene Thomas served six. Gary Thomas Rowe was placed in the witness protection program and was later granted immunity from prosecution for his role in the crime.
