Detroit Sculptor to Memorialize Slain Civil Rights Activist
A 23-year-old sculptor from Detroit is shaping the memory of a civil rights activist who was slain in Alabama during a 1965 voting rights march.
The Detroit Free Press reports that Austen Brantley is preparing to unveil a statue of Viola Liuzzo this July. He was commissioned by the Viola Liuzzo Park Association to memorialize the white activist, who drove from Detroit to Alabama to join a march led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Liuzzo was driving fellow activists between Montgomery and Selma when she was fatally shot by Ku Klux Klan members.
Brantley says he found Liuzzo’s moral compass captivating, weighing leaving her children against knowing the brutality marchers were suffering in the south.
The statue will stand in the northwest Detroit park dedicated to Liuzzo.
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