Viola Liuzzo's Legacy

1276 Words3 Pages

Priya Baskota
Professor Phyllis P. Elmore
English 1302
15 March 2017
Viola Liuzzo and Her Legacy
From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo,
is the book by Mary Stanton. The book is a journey by Mary Stanton in search of the life before and after the Alabama march of Viola Liuzzo. Mary Stanton attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota and received a B.A. in philosophy and literature from the University of Minnesota. Stanton is generally known as a fiction writer. She began her career with the publication of her first novel, The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West, in 1988. Beside being a writer, she is a horsewoman, a goat aficionado, an enthusiastic gardener, and a fan of gourmet food. In this book, Mary Stanton writes …show more content…

She knew what was right and couldn’t hold back. From Detroit Board of Education to segregation, she fought with everything and everyone for justice. Mrs. Liuzzo challenged the Detroit Board of Education for recently passed Michigan State Statue that reduced the age at which a student could drop out of high school without any permission to sixteen from eighteen. She believed children must be required to stay in school until they were eighteen as it could protect them from being exploited just as the child labor laws did before (Stanton pp.60 – 61). Viola Liuzzo was involved in neighborhood activism most of her adulthood, moreover she began to get seriously involved in the organized civil rights movement right after entering college. She was involved in the march to the federal building in Detroit held by 250 Wayne State University students’ which was a part of the civil rights movement. When it came to segregation she went totally against it. Stanton writes she once said to her black best friend Sarah Evans “Sarah we’re all created equal yet they’ll give me more justice than they’ll give you. That’s no right.’’ Stanton adds she wanted to be part of what was happening in the country. She had some of the stuff in her that Dr. King had in him (Stanton …show more content…

She was 39 and expected to stay home. Her deaths showed her motives, stability and judgement to speculation. The circumstances of her death made her Hero but she had been playing the role of a Hero the whole time. She afforded a clear symbol to the segregationists. For her family, friends, and neighbors she was the woman with a good heart. She always supported what was right. For her family, she was the source of love and courage, for the nation she is hero, fighter, and a martyr. She gave her life for human equality and peace. She was not just a woman but an extraordinary and one of the most courageous woman in the

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