I heard this today. It was quietly moving. I thought I'd pass it along.
Link to Audio
Killed For Taking Part In 'Everybody's Fight'
by Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR -- August 12, 2013
[...]
[Sally] Liuzzo-Prado was 6 when her mother, Viola Liuzzo, was killed by Ku Klux Klan members following a voting rights march in Alabama in 1965. Liuzzo was the only white female protester to die in the civil rights movement.
The housewife and mother of five had been an active NAACP member in Detroit and was horrified at the violence she saw inflicted upon black protesters on television. So when she heard of a four-day, 54-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to support voting rights, she packed a bag. Liuzzo told her husband: "It's everybody's fight." She kissed her children goodbye and began the drive south.
[...]
King attended Liuzzo's funeral and comforted her family, but not everyone agreed that she was a hero. A group of people tried to break down the Liuzzos' door, and a cross was burned on their lawn. [...]
Then, there were the rumors: After Viola Liuzzo's death, there were newspaper reports that Liuzzo had gone south to meet and have sex with black men. Another rumor claimed she was a drug addict. And the July 1965 issue of The Ladies' Home Journal published a poll that asked if readers thought Liuzzo was a good mother. Fifty-five percent didn't. ("I feel sorry for what happened," said one woman in a focus group convened to talk about the Liuzzo story, "but I feel she should have stayed home and minded her own business.")
The family couldn't figure out why anyone would say such things. Then, when the Klansmen were put on trial for Liuzzo's death, they learned that a key witness was a paid FBI informant who had been in the Klansmen's car. Years later, the family sought to have Liuzzo's FBI file opened. They finally succeeded, and that's when they discovered that the rumors about her had come directly from J. Edgar Hoover. The family believes the FBI director was desperate to divert attention from the agency by smearing Viola.
[...]
Good thing, powerful agencies don't do stuff like that anymore ...
Just 'make stuff up', hurtful lies and rumors, in order to distract, smear, and misdirect.
That would never happen now ... would it? Those powerful directors of today's wired-age are all above re-approach. And all they ask is that, we just trust them.
"You'd better."