By Abayomi Azikiwe
A series of events between September 12-14 in Detroit paid tribute to the life and legacy of those who were on the frontlines of the struggle for Civil Rights during the early and mid-1960s.
The Viola Liuzzo Park Association held a dedication ceremony on September 13 at the location which was transformed from a playground to an area which recognizes the significance of this Detroit resident who was martyred in late March 1965 while transporting participants in the Selma to Montgomery march on its final day.
A booklet commemorating the contributions of Liuzzo points out that Liuzzo, along with her husband and five children, had lived in the neighborhood where the park is located when she responded to the call from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the founding president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), for volunteers to come to Selma and join the march to the capital of Montgomery to demand voting rights for African Americans. The situation in Selma had gained international attention when on March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers and local police attacked a peaceful demonstration of 600 people.
Known as “Bloody Sunday”, the March 7 incident has become a historical marker in regard to the campaigns to win the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Act was signed into law by then President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6 of the same year.
Detroit had been a center of activity in support of the southern Civil Rights Movement since the mid-1950s when labor unions and community groups provided material assistance to the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56. This boycott was prompted by the arrest of Mrs. Rosa L. Parks, a Montgomery resident and longtime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Parks and her husband Raymond later migrated to Detroit in the aftermath of the successful conclusion of the boycott which resulted in a United States Supreme Court decision striking down the segregation laws in Montgomery which upheld segregation in the public transportation system.
Within the city of Detroit itself, many African American residents during the 1950s and 1960s had their origins in the state of Alabama and other southern states. Many of them came to Detroit and numerous northern municipalities to both work in the automotive and steel industries as well as escape the terror they were subjected to during the Jim Crow era.
WSU Law School Symposium
On September 14, the Wayne State University Law School’s Damon J. Kieth Center for Civil Rights hosted a panel discussion on the role of Detroit in the Alabama freedom movement between 1962-1965. The discussion was moderated by Peter Blackmon of Eastern Michigan University (EMU) who thanked the sponsors and audience members for their interest and participation.
The panelists were Dorothy Dewberry Aldridge, a veteran Civil Rights organizer who had been a member of the NAACP Youth Council in Detroit during the late 1950s. Dewberry-Aldridge later joined the Northern Student Movement and the Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which played an important role in mobilizing support for the activists involved in the sit-ins and other protest activities in the early and mid-1960s.
Other speakers included Martha Prescod Noonan, formerly of Detroit, who had been a member of SNCC and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Noonan entered the University of Michigan in 1961 where she became active in the movements for social change. Noonan traveled to Mississippi and Alabama during the period between 1962-65 where she worked with SNCC organizers on numerous projects.
Noonan emphasized that there were many misconceptions about the character of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. She pointed to the fact that the struggle was initiated by leaders and organizers who were from Selma and other centers of the movement.
In the Spring of 1962, Noonan attended a SNCC and SDS conference held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where organizers gathered to report on their work in the South. She heard Ella Baker, a veteran organizer and mentor for SNCC, who discussed the overall vision of a Black-led movement which would foster a radical transformation of society.
Bettie Mae Fikes, known as the “Voice of Selma,” spoke on her childhood and the loss of her mother at an early age. Fikes joined the Civil Rights Movement in Selma where threats from the police and school authorities sought to suppress the campaigns against segregation and for voting rights.
Fikes had been a member of the SNCC Freedom Singers composed of Civil Rights workers who uplifted the masses with music which championed the righteousness of the campaigns to end segregation. The SNCC Freedom Singers toured the U.S. to build support for the movement and to raise much-need funds.
The Selma veteran noted that the struggle against racism in Dallas County had been growing since 1962 when Dr. Bernard Lafayette and Dr. Colia Clark set up a SNCC office in the city. Many of the participants in the struggle were high school students who faced much opposition from the racist authorities and those within the African American community frightened by the threats of violence and economic sanctions.
Another veteran of the Selma freedom struggle, Terry Shaw, now living in Detroit, spoke about his introduction to the Civil Rights Movement. He had met Dr. Lafayette outside a local business establishment in 1962. Later he was recruited to participate in burgeoning campaigns in Selma.
Shaw brought up the story of Leroy Moten who was riding in the car with Liuzzo when she was shot to death in Lowndes County during the aftermath of the Selma to Montgomery March. Moten was reportedly knocked unconscious after the car crashed when Liuzzo was shot to death driving her vehicle. Shaw said that Moten played dead to avoid the same fate as Liuzzo when the Klansmen walked over to the car.
Moten was a 19-year-old student in Selma when he experienced this traumatic event. He later testified in four different trials of the assassins, two of whom were given ten-year federal prison sentences in Alabama. He eventually left Alabama and settled years later in Connecticut where he passed away in September of 2023 at the age of 78.
The Washington Post, in an article published in January of this year, noted that only 40 people attended Moten’s funeral. Later in January, after the historic nature of his life and contributions became known to state officials, he was honored at a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration where his son, Leroy Moten, Jr. was present.
Decades Later Advancements Made by the Civil Rights Movement Have Been Reversed
Fikes pointed out in her remarks that the gains which were won during the 1960s have been slowly taken away. She cited the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder (2013) which has largely nullified the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Professor Jeanne Theoharis of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and the author of several books including “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” said that it is important that the correct and documented history of the Civil Rights Movement be written and published. She wrote this biography to refute the popular characterization of Parks who has been described as a somewhat passive participant in history. In reality, the Alabama native had been an activist for decades and continued this work even after relocating to Detroit during the late 1950s.
Noonan, one of the editors of the pioneering book entitled, “Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts of Women in SNCC,” reflected on the process of producing this important work. During the period of collecting chapters and editing, she insisted upon providing adequate space for the local activists in the South to relay their stories to the public.
Women played a critical role in the origins and developmental phases of the Civil Rights Movement although they have not been given proper attention by scholars, filmmakers and journalists. Dewberry-Aldridge, who was a motivating force in the Viola Liuzzo Park Association’s refurbishing of the location on the Northwest side of Detroit, discussed her role in the Freedom Tours, a project which takes young people from the city to the historic sites related to the Civil Rights Movement in the South.
Dewberry-Aldridge also serves as the Chairperson of the Detroit MLK Committee which organizes an annual rally, march and cultural program honoring the birthday of the Civil Rights and Antiwar leader in January on the federally recognized holiday. Her activism is centered on keeping the movement alive and continuing the struggle for total freedom. All the panelists stressed that Selma and Dallas County are not completely liberated due to the impoverishment and environmental degradation still very much in evidence.
Even in Detroit, which contributed immensely to the history of the Abolitionist, Labor, Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, has been subjected to the mass removals of African Americans, the imposition of a white corporate mayor and the theft of public resources which were gained through decades of popular struggles. Consequently, there needs to be a renewal of the freedom movement to halt the reactionary processes which are engulfing the masses of African Americans and all oppressed working people.
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