“Today marks the beginning of a determined, organized, mobilized campaign to get the right to vote everywhere in Alabama,” King told supporters at Selma’s Brown Chapel AME Church. “We must be ready to go to jail by the thousands. ... Our cry to the state of Alabama is a simple one. Give us the ballot!”Among those who heard his call was Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old white housewife from Detroit. Carl M. Cannon RealClear Politics
J. Edgar Hoover began a smear campaign against the victim to divert attention from an inconvenient fact: an FBI informant known to have participated in Klan violence had been in the killers’ car and may even have participated in the slaying. Viola’s family endured Hoover’s claiming that cuts on her arm from the car’s shattered window indicated “recent drug use” and that her proximity to Moton resembled “a necking party,” despite an autopsy revealing no traces of drugs in her system and indicating she hadn’t had sex recently before her death. Donna Britt WP