Martin Luther King said Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. This was something Viola Liuzzo knew from the bottom of her heart when she set out in March 1965 for Selma, Alabama after watching newsreel footage of civil rights marchers being beaten there. Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a wife and mother of 5 children left her home in Detroit, Michigan to work with Martin Luther King Jr. registering black voters in Selma. She was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, one of whom was an FBI informant, while driving another activist home from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Despite efforts by the FBI to discredit her reputation, (and this because they wanted to cover up that there was an FBI informant in the vehicle who may have been the gunman). 350 people attended her funeral, including Martin Luther King Jr. Viola's murder led President Lyndon Baines Johnson to order an investigation into the KKK and helped encourage legislators to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This was a landmark piece of federal legislation outlawing racial discrimination in voting. Viola Liuzzo was commitment to creating a better future for her children and for all people. Her attitude was not I'm white, a northerner, a wife, a mother of 5 children, what does this have to do with me or what can I possibly do to lessen this injustice? She was NOT a bystander, instead, she felt that, in her words, it was everybody's fight. Incredibly, a Ladies Home Journal magazine survey taken right after her murder suggested a certain culpability on her part by having left home and incredibly, 55% of readers actually agreed! This was a peculiar and particularly devastating intersection of racial (in this case white) and gender (woman, wife, especially mother) discrimination. We have to take into consideration the much more rigid gender roles at the time and see that Viola was a true pioneer of married women and mothers seeking global meaning and contribution in their lives. Yes, the world is a risky place but what kind of world would it be and what kind of people would we be if we just stayed home? Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela all made huge sacrifices in their personal and familial lives and we would never suggest they should have just stayed home. Instead we know we are better off and we are grateful for their sacrifices, their commitment and their achievements. Viola Liuzzo was an important figure in the civil rights movement in our country and also an icon in gender role expansion and the meaningful national and global contributions of wives and mothers. Viola is among 40 civil rights martyrs honored on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery and in 2013, she was awarded the Ford Freedom Humanitarian Award which has only been given thus far to one other person, Nelson Mandela. This is very fitting because Nelson Mandela writes in his autobiography that his greatest regret, his greatest sorrow is that in becoming the father of his country, he was denied the right to be a father to his own family. I feel safe in saying that, like Nelson Mandela, Viola Liuzzo's greatest sorrow would be that in becoming A mother to Civil Rights Movement in this country, she was denied the right to be a mother to her own children. She has two Face Book pages managed by her daughters Viola Liuzzo Civil Rights Martyr and Civil Rights: Holding the Hands of History. Show less «