Civil Rights Leaders Attend Liuzzo Funeral

Mar. 30, 1965 - Four of the nation’s leading Negro civil rights leaders paid homage today to Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, the white Detroit mother who gave her life for their common cause.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and John Lewis were among 350 persons who attended a funeral mass in Detroit this morning for Mrs. Liuzzo, who was shot to death last week in Alabama. Of the four leaders, only Lewis had ever met her.

Mrs. Liuzzo’s body, in a polished maple coffin, was borne into the Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church at 10:37 a.m. by four nephews and two officials of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters who work with her husband, Anthony Liuzzo. Liuzzo and the couple’s five children followed the coffin.

At the service, the Rev. James Sheehan, executive secretary of the Archbishop’s Committee on Human Relations in Detroit, expressed the hope that Mrs. Liuzzo’s death would fortify more whites “with the courage to act.”

“We hurt,” he continued. “Today America hurts. All of us who have any pride for what our country stands for are in anguish at the death of Viola Liuzzo.”

Lewis said he had met Mrs. Liuzzo in Alabama and felt “an obligation to come here and pay my respects to a fellow freedom fighter.”

Among those attending the funeral were Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers Union; James Hoffa, president of the teamsters; Lieut. Gov. William Milliken of Michigan, and Lawrence Gubow, U.S. Attorney in Michigan, who represented President Johnson.

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