From Selma to Sorrow Term Paper

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Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo by Mary Stanton. Specifically it will discuss the book and the author incorporating particular questions into the essay. "From Selma to Sorrow" tells the story of Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights worker and mother murdered in Selma, Alabama in 1965 and the only white woman to be honored on the Civil Rights Memorial. The book opens up new questions about law enforcement and the South during the 1960s, and makes the reader stop and think about all the senseless violence that has been committed simply because of race or religion. This book is a biography, but it also encompasses the history and beliefs of the time, giving the reader a glimpse into the past and events that cannot be changed.

Author Stanton takes present time and the past and weaves them together to form the backdrop of this book. The sad thing is, sometimes the past and the present seem to blend together and get hazy. It seems that is the South, a lot of the prejudice and hatred is still there, it just does not make the headlines anymore. For example, the author writes about the marker on the road where Liuzzo was murdered. She says a Montgomery social worker tells her, "Their third try I believe [to erect a marker]. The markers keep getting knocked over. The first one was smashed up with a sledge hammer'" (Stanton 21). The social worker is not speaking in 1965, but in 1994. The author shows that time stands still in areas of the South, and that some hatreds take a long time to die. As another interviewee in the book notes, "The South is a peculiar place'" (Stanton 22).

At first, the author's own voice in the beginning of the book seemed like an intrusion into the story that did not need to occur.

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However, the author uses her own voice to give the reader something very important to the eventual telling of the story. Her own experience of the 1960s as a young woman new to the workforce gives the essential background and color to the reader so they understand the time period and the overall mood of the country. Her remembrances of the Evening News and the stories on Vietnam, Martin Luther King, President Johnson, and more (Stanton 4) help the reader feel more comfortable with the history, and understand just how much turmoil and unrest the country faced at the time. Without this introduction in the author's voice, the rest of the book might not have made so much sense historically.

Just about everything the author includes in the book exemplifies this time period. She includes information on the people she interviews, and what the South is like as she is putting it together, so there is something to compare history with. The remembrances of the people in the book seem to make history come alive, and they also really represent the feelings and attitudes or the times, especially when it comes to a white woman working for freedom in the South. There is something else that exemplifies the time period, and that is controversy, like the controversy surrounding Gary Thomas Rowe and….....

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