Memorial Day: We can do better

Memorial Day was big in Ashland, Ohio, the small town where I grew up.

It seemed like everyone in town came out to crowd Main Street for the annual Memorial Day parade.

The stars of that parade were the military veterans who passed by.

Whenever they marched by, a hush came over the crowd. Then, loud cheers. The parade made its way to the town cemetery, where a ceremony took place: Prayers, the reading of names of Ashland’s own military martyrs, Taps, and a 21-gun salute.

Memorial Day is not the same since I moved away from Ashland 20 years ago. Back home, they know how to do the “memorial” part right.

I wish all of America would keep Memorial Day the way we did back in Ashland, but I would like to add one thing.

Let’s honor and remember our military martyrs, but let’s honor and remember another group of American martyrs along with them.

Let me tell you the story of Viola Liuzzo.

Viola was born in 1925. Her family was dirt poor, living in one-room shacks and moving from place to place to find work in the Deep South during the Great Depression.

In 1943, the family moved to Detroit, Michigan. The “Arsenal of Democracy” needed workers to fill the factories that were making bombs, jeeps, planes, and tanks for the U.S. armed forces fighting World War II.

Viola got a job working as a cashier at a local grocery store. One of her coworkers, Sarah Evans, became her best friend for the rest of her life.

Viola was white. Sarah was black.

Viola’s friendship with Sarah exposed her to the things that most white Detroiters did not know.

For example, hiring managers picked unqualified, unskilled white workers to fill skilled jobs rather than hire black workers who had the skills to do those jobs. Black men and women who had college degrees or special training could often do nothing but clean latrines or sweep floors. Nobody would hire them to do anything else.

By city code and “restrictive covenants,” black residents could only live in three crowded enclaves in a city that stretched out over 143 square miles. Those enclaves were the most run down parts of the city and they grew more and more crowded as more black people came to Detroit looking for work. When the city finally built a new neighborhood for black residents, white residents rioted. When the first black families arrived to move into their new homes, whites threatened to burn down the neighborhood and kill any black families who tried to live there. The city backed down and gave the neighborhood to white families instead.

Viola thought these things were wrong, so she decided to do something.

After the war, she began volunteering on civil rights projects in Detroit.

In 1965, Viola was a 39-year old mother of five when she saw TV news reports from Selma, Alabama. Peaceful protesters gathered in Selma to march to the state capitol in Montgomery. The organizers of the march wanted to raise awareness that white people in the state of Alabama passed laws that made it almost impossible for black citizens to vote.

Local and state police attacked the marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. TV cameras broadcast images of “Bloody Sunday” to the world.

Viola saw those images and made up her mind to join the fight for civil rights for all Americans.

She drove the family car 811 miles from Detroit to Selma and got to work.

Viola drove supplies to black voter registration efforts taking place all over the state of Alabama.

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., finally led a successful march from Selma to Montgomery, Viola volunteered at hospitality stations along the way. When the march ended, she used her car to shuttle marchers back to Selma.

After one of these trips, Viola was on her way back to Montgomery. Another volunteer, a young black man named Leroy Moton, was with her. Four white members of the Ku Klux Klan spotted them traveling together. The Klansmen chased Viola down and shot her twice in the head.

Many American martyrs died in combat and wore uniforms.

But not all of them.

Some of them drive family station wagons and volunteer in communities like Detroit and Selma, Alabama.

Americans like Viola Liuzzo are every bit as responsible as any soldier for making America “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Should Memorial Day not be for American martyrs like Viola Liuzzo, too?

Most towns in America inscribe the names of their military martyrs on bronze and stone in a public place.

Go find one of those memorials today. Say a prayer of thanks as you trace your finger along the raised letters that spell the names of fallen Americans.

But make this Memorial Day complete by remembering American martyrs like Viola Liuzzo, too.

If you’re looking for a place to start, look at this honor roll of civil rights martyrs from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Grace and peace.