One of the many Americans horrified by the events of Bloody Sunday was a thirty-nine-year-old white woman from Detroit, Michigan named Viola Liuzzo (1925-1965). Liuzzo, a NAACP member and local civil rights activist, drove to Selma, Alabama, to provide assistance to those marching from Selma to Montgomery. She volunteered ferrying marchers from Montgomery back to Selma in her green Oldsmobile, including Leroy Morton. On the evening of Thursday, March 25, 1965, a group of Ku Klux Klansmen began chasing Liuzzo and Morton along Highway 80. Liuzzo was shot and killed by a 21-year-old gunman named Collie Wilkins, but Morton survived the attack.
Liuzzo’s murder further shocked the nation and spurred federal voting rights legislation. Within twenty-four hours President Johnson announced the arrest of the four men on national television. One of the men, Gary Rowe, was an FBI informant and testified against the other three. All three were convicted of various federal charges, not including murder. Wilkins served seven years in prison; Eugene Thomas served six years in prison and William Eaton died of a heart attack.