The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo
Gary May
Abstract
This book reveals the untold story of the murder of Civil Rights worker Viola Liuzzo, shot to death by members of the violent Birmingham Ku Klux Klan at the end of Martin Luther King's historic Voting Rights March in 1965. The case drew national attention and was solved almost instantly because one of the Klansman present during the shooting was Gary Thomas Rowe, an undercover FBI informant. At the time, Rowe's information and subsequent testimony were heralded as a triumph of law enforcement, but his history of collaboration with both the Klan and the FBI was far more complex. Based on previo ... More
This book reveals the untold story of the murder of Civil Rights worker Viola Liuzzo, shot to death by members of the violent Birmingham Ku Klux Klan at the end of Martin Luther King's historic Voting Rights March in 1965. The case drew national attention and was solved almost instantly because one of the Klansman present during the shooting was Gary Thomas Rowe, an undercover FBI informant. At the time, Rowe's information and subsequent testimony were heralded as a triumph of law enforcement, but his history of collaboration with both the Klan and the FBI was far more complex. Based on previously unexamined FBI and Justice Department records, the book demonstrates that in their ongoing efforts to protect Rowe's cover, the FBI knowingly became an accessory to some of the most grotesque crimes of the Civil Rights era—including a vicious attack on the Freedom Riders and perhaps even the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The story of a renegade informant and an intelligence system ill-prepared to deal with threats from within, it offers a cautionary tale about what can happen when secret police power goes unchecked.
Keywords:
Ku Klux Klan,
Viola Liuzzo,
Gary Thomas Rowe,
FBI,
Justice Department,
Civil Rights era,
secret police,
law enforcement
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2005 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300106350 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: October 2013 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300106350.001.0001 |
