In 1965, a group of klansmen from Birmingham were sent to Selma, Alabama, with orders to keep the marchers under surveillance. At a stoplight, they noticed a green Oldsmobile with Michigan license plates driven by a white woman with a young, black male passenger. For the klansmen, the car and the passengers symbolized the two most despised aspects for the Civil Rights Movement: outsiders and race mixing.

Viola Liuzzo was a white mother from Detroit who had been shuttling marchers between Montgomery and Selma for three days. She had become known as a tireless and cheerful worker. By all descriptions, Viola was an extraordinary woman. At age 36, with five children at home, she had gone back to school to become a medical lab technician. She worked only for a few months and then quit in protest over the way female secretaries were treated. With the encouragement of her friend, she became one of the few white members of the National Assocation for the Advancement of Colored People. On March 7, 1965, Viola and her husband were watching the news when they saw the first clips of state troopers attacking Selma marchers. Tears rolled down Mrs. Liuzzo’s face and she brooded over the scene for days. Despite her husband’s concern, she got in her car and headed for Selma alone.

After the klansmen had spotted her and her young, black passenger they began to follow them. Surprisingly, Mrs. Liuzzo didn’t seem too concerned, and soon both cars were racing down the highway at 100 miles per hour. About 20 miles outside of Selma, the klansmen pulled up beside the car and one aimed his pistol out the window and shot Mrs. Liuzzo, shattering her skull. LeRoy Moton, her passenger, grabed the wheel and hit the brakes, and the car crashed into an embankment. When the klansmen walked over to inspect their work, Moton faked his death while they shone a light in the car. As soon as they left, Moton flagged down a truck carrying more civil rights workers, and although he was terrified, he was uninjured. Viola Liuzzo was dead.

After two trials (one being a hung jury where the klansmen were found not guilty), the three klansmen were eventually found guilty and each sentenced to 10 years in prison. This was the first conviction of murder in a civil rights case and was a landmark in southern racial history. It was also the first time the federal government successfully prosecuted a case of civil rights conspiracy.

 As intense a story as this is, we can look at it as a learning opportunity. It’s important that every day, in every way possble, we experience history in order to inspire the future.

On May 4, 1961, a group of blacks and whites set out on a highly publicized trip to test a Supreme Court order outlawing segretation on bus terminals. They called themselves Freedom Riders.

Waiting for these buses to arrive at the terminal, an angry mob of white men carrying pipes, clubs, bricks and knives came at the bus. The driver drove off quickly as they saw the mob there waiting, but the mob caught up with the bus again right outside of Anniston, Alabama. The mob smashed all of the windows of the bus and threw a firebomb on board. The Freedom Riders all rushed out of the flames and into the hands of the mob where they were quickly brutally beaten by them.

The second busload of riders were all beaten by eight white men who boarded the bus when it pulled up to the terminal. The most seriously injured was a man named Walter Bergman who suffered a stroke as a result of the beating and was confined to a wheelchair for life.

Top federal officials arranged for the wounded Freedom Riders to fly out of Alabama, and students in Nashville made plans to finish the Freedom Ride. Federal officials tried to discourage them but were unsucessful. Once again these individuals attempting to finish the Freedom Ride were met by a mob – this time of more than 1,000 whites who beat them without police interference.

President Kennedy decided to protect the Freedom Riders since officials had failed to stop them. They rode into Jackson Mississippi unharmed the rest of the way, but were promptly arrested due to the fact that officials were told they could continue to enforce their segretgation laws if they would guarantee the Freedom Riders’ safety.

In September, bus companies were ordered to obey the earlier Supreme Court ruling which outlawed segregation in bus terminals. Once again, young protesters had exposed the injustices of segregation and forced the federal government to defend constitutional rights. As Martin Luther King said, “The real meaning of the movement: that students had faith in the future. That the movement was based on hope, that this movement had something within it that says somehow even though the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.”