UC Merced presents daughters of slain civil rights activist with Spendlove Prize

UC Merced presented the Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance on Thursday night to the the three daughters of Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a civil rights activist killed in 1965 by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Liuzzo, 39 at the time of her death, was killed while driving another activist back to Selma, Ala. from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was the only white female to be killed during the Civil Rights Movement.

Her three daughters, Sally Liuzzo Prado, 56; Penny Liuzzo Herrington, 68; and Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe, 66, present Thursday, said they don’t think of their mother as an activist. Liuzzo simply didn’t see color, they said.

A wife and mother of five children, Liuzzo left her Detroit home in spring 1965 to work with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. registering black voters in Selma, Ala., after seeing news about a police attack on 600 civil rights workers.

The daughters and their two brothers Tommy and Anthony Liuzzo, were raised in a home were white and black children were equally welcome. “That’s just the way we grew up...we didn’t know there was a problem, but the neighbors did,” Mary told the Sun-Star.

Penny added that it wasn’t until high school that they began to see segregation. For them it was difficult to wrap their heads around the idea of color lines because back home their mother was a member of the Detroit Chapter of the NAACP, and her best friend, Sarah Evans, was a black woman.

Liuzzo’s story has been the subject of several books and a documentary. She is among 40 civil rights martyrs honored on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., and was inducted into the Michigan Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2013, she was awarded the Ford Freedom Humanitarian Award.

However, her children simply remember a loving and brave woman, who sought justice, not because she was an activist, but because it was in her nature, they said.

According to Sally, who was only age 6 at the time of her mother’s death, the government created a smear campaign against Liuzzo to distract from the fact that an FBI informant was among the Ku Klux Klan group that killed her mother. The lies, she said, distorted the image of her mother and created a “horrible human being” that she did not recognize. For this reason, she and her two sisters have dedicated the past 50 years to letting people know who her mother truly was.

“We were told she didn’t love us, if she had loved us, she wouldn’t have gone and gotten involved in something that none of her business,” Mary said.

The sisters added that “even the blacks in the South” couldn’t believe that Liuzzo would take such extreme risks for her beliefs, when “she didn’t have to come, her life was fine, her kids were fine.”

Mary, who was 17 when Liuzzo was killed, said that it was years before she could truly comprehend her mother’s reasons for becoming involved in the movement.

“But she went because it is our fight...we’re all part of it,” Mary added. “I always say, she loved me enough to want a better world, but it took me almost 40 years to really grasp that.”

All three women now celebrate her mother courage. Each of the sisters wears a necklace with a pendant that reads: “Well behaved women seldom make history.”

Liuzzo‘s daughters said they were honored to receive the Spendlove Prize in their mother’s name.” My mother would be humbled,” Penny said.

The Spendlove Prize was established in 2006 in honor of lifelong Merced residents Alice and Clifford Spendlove. The annual prize honors an individual who exemplifies the principles of social justice, diplomacy and tolerance in his or her work. Past recipients include, award-winning author Peter Balakian, immigrant rights activist and lawyer Cruz Reynoso, and former president Jimmy Carter.

This story was originally published November 6, 2014 at 8:02 PM with the headline "UC Merced presents daughters of slain civil rights activist with Spendlove Prize."