Most of the movies Marin and I see
scare us. Maybe it’s because our life
is boundaried by children needing many things.
Maybe it’s because the films, many of them documentaries,
are well done and bring up important, challenging issues.
“Home of the Brave” scared us for different reasons.
It’s the story of Viola Liuzzo, 39, the only white woman
to lose her life in the civil rights era.
She died between Birmingham and Selma in 1965.
Viola Liuzzo’s life changed in the late 50's
when she birthed a stillborn child.
The catholic church in Detroit told her that the child
could not go to heaven, because it had not been baptized
while it was still alive.
Viola left the church. Despite having five children,
she went back to school. Was it the student activist groups
which brought her to the new place. Was it the Unitarian church
she began attending? Was it having a deep relationship
with a woman caring for her children, an African American her age?
When Viola saw black people beaten by the Selma police
on television, she didn’t just feel horrified. Responding to calls
for assistance from Civil Rights leaders, she got in her car.
She drove to Selma. She lived in the projects and helped
on the famous “voting rights march” in Alabama.
Only 150 black people were registered to vote among 30,000.
To vote, a black person needed a white “patron.”
Driving a young man back from Birmingham one night
she was assassinated. Four Ku Klux Klanners in a car
took her out. One was an informer from the FBI.
They were acquitted by a local jury.
What her five children began to discover in the 70's was
not only did the FBI informant spur the Klansmen on,
he likely was the shooter. He also was involved
in most of the mortal violence of the Civil Rights era,
including the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
which killed four little girls, two years earlier.
The FBI had a thousand-page file on their mother,
a smear-campaign originating with J Edgar Hoover himself.
The entire file on the KKK at the height of the civil rights movement
was 1/3 of Viola Liuzzo’s.
The children’s civil suit against the FBI in federal court
that their mother’s civil rights were violated
was ruled against, and the kids needed to pick up
the court fees of around $100,000.
“I’ll never pay a penny to the US government
for the murder of my mother,” was Tony’s response.
That’s when the oldest son, Tommy, went AWOL
from Michigan into the backwoods of Mississippi.
Tony joined the Michigan militia,
a la Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.
After 9/11 with the Patriot Act becoming law,
he also went underground. The three daughters
struggled to pay off debts, live with poverty,
sorrow and loss.
The movie scared Marin
because of the devastation of Viola’s family.
What can happen to the innocent in this world
when an idealist takes on powers of evil on behalf of others,
and justice is denied. It was indeed harrowing to consider.
Having the government against you, harming you.
The movie scared me
because of the arrogance of power
wielded against poor people by the FBI.
As a follower of Jesus, the ravages of the poor
always move me toward a deep sadness.
Which we see in various forms almost daily.
The past three days Israel bombing Gaza.
And by personally not doing anything about it.
We gather in the morning darkness and sing
“May there always be sunshine,
may there always be blue sky,
may there always be Mama,
may there always be me”
in the candlelit living room
before our day begins.
Isn’t “mama” is a stand in for God,
a simple way of saying,
“may trustworthy hope always stand beside us,”
may transforming love hold us close,
and give us courage,
to stand up to all sadness, and greed
and violence and self-serving power.
If we stand there and know this,
know it with the muscle memory
of our hearts, so we can reflexively
reach for it and find it, and gather it
in the darkest most paralyzing dark
then
there is no fear.
scare us. Maybe it’s because our life
is boundaried by children needing many things.
Maybe it’s because the films, many of them documentaries,
are well done and bring up important, challenging issues.
“Home of the Brave” scared us for different reasons.
It’s the story of Viola Liuzzo, 39, the only white woman
to lose her life in the civil rights era.
She died between Birmingham and Selma in 1965.
Viola Liuzzo’s life changed in the late 50's
when she birthed a stillborn child.
The catholic church in Detroit told her that the child
could not go to heaven, because it had not been baptized
while it was still alive.
Viola left the church. Despite having five children,
she went back to school. Was it the student activist groups
which brought her to the new place. Was it the Unitarian church
she began attending? Was it having a deep relationship
with a woman caring for her children, an African American her age?
When Viola saw black people beaten by the Selma police
on television, she didn’t just feel horrified. Responding to calls
for assistance from Civil Rights leaders, she got in her car.
She drove to Selma. She lived in the projects and helped
on the famous “voting rights march” in Alabama.
Only 150 black people were registered to vote among 30,000.
To vote, a black person needed a white “patron.”
Driving a young man back from Birmingham one night
she was assassinated. Four Ku Klux Klanners in a car
took her out. One was an informer from the FBI.
They were acquitted by a local jury.
What her five children began to discover in the 70's was
not only did the FBI informant spur the Klansmen on,
he likely was the shooter. He also was involved
in most of the mortal violence of the Civil Rights era,
including the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
which killed four little girls, two years earlier.
The FBI had a thousand-page file on their mother,
a smear-campaign originating with J Edgar Hoover himself.
The entire file on the KKK at the height of the civil rights movement
was 1/3 of Viola Liuzzo’s.
The children’s civil suit against the FBI in federal court
that their mother’s civil rights were violated
was ruled against, and the kids needed to pick up
the court fees of around $100,000.
“I’ll never pay a penny to the US government
for the murder of my mother,” was Tony’s response.
That’s when the oldest son, Tommy, went AWOL
from Michigan into the backwoods of Mississippi.
Tony joined the Michigan militia,
a la Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.
After 9/11 with the Patriot Act becoming law,
he also went underground. The three daughters
struggled to pay off debts, live with poverty,
sorrow and loss.
The movie scared Marin
because of the devastation of Viola’s family.
What can happen to the innocent in this world
when an idealist takes on powers of evil on behalf of others,
and justice is denied. It was indeed harrowing to consider.
Having the government against you, harming you.
The movie scared me
because of the arrogance of power
wielded against poor people by the FBI.
As a follower of Jesus, the ravages of the poor
always move me toward a deep sadness.
Which we see in various forms almost daily.
The past three days Israel bombing Gaza.
And by personally not doing anything about it.
We gather in the morning darkness and sing
“May there always be sunshine,
may there always be blue sky,
may there always be Mama,
may there always be me”
in the candlelit living room
before our day begins.
Isn’t “mama” is a stand in for God,
a simple way of saying,
“may trustworthy hope always stand beside us,”
may transforming love hold us close,
and give us courage,
to stand up to all sadness, and greed
and violence and self-serving power.
If we stand there and know this,
know it with the muscle memory
of our hearts, so we can reflexively
reach for it and find it, and gather it
in the darkest most paralyzing dark
then
there is no fear.
.JPG)
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