Murder on the highway

Hazel Rochman

Viola Liuzzo was a 39-year-old white woman, a mother of five who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan for her part in the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Siegel frames Liuzzo's personal story with a general history of segregation and the African American struggle for the right to vote. The author focuses especially on the confrontation in Selma and the horror of "Bloody Sunday" that drew Liuzzo from her home in Detroit to join the march. Then Siegel describes the immediate events leading up to the shoot-out on the highway. The last part of the book deals with the trials, the eventual conviction of Klansmen on conspiracy charges, and the aftermath. There's a chapter about the Klan, and a chilling epilogue raises questions about the role of the FBI informer. The writing is sometimes dull, but the political material is compelling, and Siegel does give some sense of Liuzzo as ordinary woman and as "saint," her problems as well as her idealism. There are no source notes, but a bibliographic essay directs readers to newspaper and magazine accounts written during that time. With several full-page photographs, this is an important addition to the growing body of biography about the brave people in the civil rights movement.