Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a mother of five, traveled from her Michigan home to the South to help on the frontline of the civil rights movement, and suffered a cruel fate at the hands of an Alabama klansman. She was killed instantly when he fired a .38 caliber pistol through the window of her car on March 25, 1965.
Thousands of other white women worked for black freedom. Anyone who cares to learn more can read Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement, published in 2000 by the University of Georgia Press. Another book, Debra L. Schultz's Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement, demonstrates the singular courage of women driven to the cause by a sense of morality and social justice.
Atlanta novelist Lillian Smith, a southern liberal and vocal critic of segregation, received an anonymous letter threatening her life if she spoke about racism to a group of white students. Her collection of essays in Killers of the Dream, published in 1949, challenged the South’s prejudice and racism and pointed to the evils of segretation. For her liberal views, she bravely faced social ostracism from southern circles.
Bill Maxwell summed it up well in his 2008 article published by the Tampa Bay Times: “Virginia Durr, an early supporter of the sit-in movement in Atlanta, learned the hard way about the hazards of standing up for human rights. "I am seeing down here," she wrote, "this deathlike conformity building up, when to speak out, to take action of any kind, to protest, to write a letter, to hold a meeting, brings down on your head both social and economic ruin and there is no recourse in the law."”
Maxwell’s article details more White heroes from the civil rights movement and the vital support they provided in securing change.
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