From Selma to Sorrow: the Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo.

By Mary Stanton. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 1998. Pp. xiv, 250. $24.95, ISBN 0-8203-2045-5.)

On March 25, 1965, angry Klansmen murdered a Detroit housewife outside of Selma, Alabama. Viola Liuzzo was everything they despised: a white female outside agitator riding in a car with a lone passenger, a black man.

To author Mary Stanton, Viola Liuzzo died a martyr. Her book, From Selma to Sorrow, is an attempt to grapple with one nagging question: why was Liuzzo vilified by the media and law enforcement.9 For Stanton, the answer lies in Gary Thomas "Tommy" Rowe, a Klansman and paid FBI informant. Stanton argues that the FBI was determined to protect itself after learning that Rowe was an accomplice. She demonstrates that law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, destroyed Liuzzo's reputation so that her death, however tragic, could never be heroic. Stanton offers a detailed, well-written account of Liuzzo's life and death and the smear campaign that ruined her reputation.

From Selma to Sorrow is the story of Viola Liuzzo and of how Stanton became interested in, even possessed by, the Liuzzo story. Both are interesting, but they complicate as much as they complement each other. Stanton admits to her lack of objectivity. Her portrayal of Liuzzo is laced with her emotional reaction to Liuzzo's life, death, and legacy, and how "Vi's" memory haunted her over a thirty-year period. Her work is, nevertheless, an insightful look at one woman's decision to become involved in civil rights.

Stanton's use of evidence is mixed. She evaluates contradictory evidence and suggests, convincingly, that Rowe was the triggerman (pp. 202-4). She does, however, make some less-supported assertions; for example, she speculates that a brief blurb in the Montgomery paper on the day of Liuzzo's murder quashing "rumors" about a white demonstrator's death might have been an "encoded message" for someone (p. 198). Furthermore, several passages without footnotes will frustrate historians who wish to investigate the book's unanswered questions.

From Selma to Sorrow could have benefited from a few additions, notably an outline of events in Selma that motivated people like Liuzzo to join the march. This would have made the work more accessible to readers not already familiar with the Selma movement. Stanton's organization is also confusing. For example, she notes that the coroner speculated that Liuzzo had dirty feet because she had been walking barefoot (p. 119). Only later does the reader learn that Liuzzo had walked the final part of the march barefoot (p. 165).

Overall, From Selma to Sorrow is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the movement and the lives of those outside agitators so maligned by segregationists. It fits well with other recent books, notably Deep in Our Hearts (Athens, Ga., 2000), the collected memoirs of nine white women who were involved in the civil rights movement, and Charles W. Eagles's Outside Agitator (Chapel Hill, 1993), the story of Jon Daniels's work in Alabama.

ALAN SCOT WILLIS
Texas A&M University-Corpus