Edgar Hoover was already spreading a smear campaign against Viola Liuzzo in his very first reports.

The docu then assembles a number of FBI documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act that corroborate this information and indicate that director J. He not only did not try to stop the violence, he may have been a direct participant. Home of the Brave goes in a new direction when it is revealed that one of the three killers was actually an FBI plant. The three men charged with Viola's murder were acquitted in a criminal trial but convicted of lesser civil rights violations in federal courts. They claimed that the car was moving and their shots were random, but the blood in and on the car indicate that it was standing still when Viola was shot, by a killer standing over her. The killers' lies were refuted by hard evidence. Local authorities conducted a sham investigation. The smear tactics against Viola after her murder claimed that she was an 'out of control white woman' who 'had no business being there.' The documentary shows magazines and articles claiming that the demonstrators were Communists on an orgy of sex and drugs, and that the meetings were motivated by the opportunity to have sex with white women. Trained as a nurse, she left her home to join the Alabama demonstrations and is seen in photographs walking side-by-side with black marchers.Īlabama met these outsiders with an appalling display of hatred.

Viola Liuzzo was a civil rights sympathizer and NAACP member who simply decided to be an activist after watching the news. Viola's death helped spur federal civil rights legislation but the cost to Ms. Documentarian Paola de Florio interviews everyone who will cooperate, including random Alabama residents, and bolsters her thesis with prime-quality news film and rare photographs.

One daughter traces Viola's route into Alabama and visits the hilltop where she died a wrought-iron fence has been erected around the marker to discourage vandalism. Liuzzo's children, now middle-aged adults. The show brings historical events to the personal level by telling the tale through Ms. This particular murder victim was the only white woman killed during the entire civil rights movement: Viola Liuzzo. Home of the Brave is an emotional documentary on the violent reaction to the civil rights marches in Alabama in 1965, focusing on one participant, a volunteer nurse and driver from Michigan who was shot point blank on a side road while shuttling black marchers to and from demonstrations.

Home of the brave viola liuzzo