In this Tuesday, July 23, 2019 photo, Sally Liuzzo-Prado, front in blue, reacts during the unveiling of the new Viola Liuzzo statue by Austen Brantley, dedicated to her mother and civil rights activist, at Viola Liuzzo Park in Detroit. Liuzzo was slain in Alabama during a 1965 voting rights march. (Kathleen Galligan/Detroit Free Press via AP)
Republished July 24, 2019 - 2:42 PM
Original Publication Date July 24, 2019 - 6:31 AM
DETROIT - A statue of a civil rights activist who was slain in Alabama during a 1965 voting rights march has been dedicated at the Detroit park that bears her name.
The statue unveiled Tuesday shows Viola Liuzzo walking barefoot — with shoes in one hand — and a Ku Klux Klan hood on the ground behind her. Sculptor Austen Brantley, who memorialized the white activist from Detroit, says Liuzzo's life "tells us ... to take action in our community and our nation."
Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five, drove from Detroit to Alabama to join 25,000 others in support of a march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She was driving fellow activists between Montgomery and Selma when she was fatally shot by Ku Klux Klan members in another car.
News from © The Associated Press, 2019