The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo

by Gary May

In The Informant , historian Gary May 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 as Gary May reveals in this provocative and powerful book, Rowe’s history of collaboration with both the Klan and the FBI was far more complex.
Based on previously unexamined FBI and Justice Department Records, The Informant 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.
A tale of a renegade informant and an intelligence system ill-prepared to deal with threats from within, The Informant offers a dramatic and cautionary tale about what can happen when secret police power goes unchecked.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Historical

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Gary May is Professor of History at the University of Delaware. He is the author of The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo.

Reviews

[Jess Fowler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a topic you can say you enjoyed reading about, but certainly intriguing and relevant. Makes you think about our justice systems and all the important real life stories out there that don’t get told.

[Dewin Anguas Barnette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very detailed and complete discussion of the case of Viola Liuzzo’s death. It was helpful in getting to know more about her and her family.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quotable:
[On June 11, 1963] In a televised address to the nation, Kennedy said, "If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public; if he cannot send his children to the best public school available; if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him; if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?"

Nearby stood Ralph Ray Roton, the Klan's publicity director, who looked to Virginia Durr "like a parody of an old Southern colonel, big black hat, string tie, dirty white shirt and dirty white whiskers." He offered "hate literature which went after not only the 'niggers,' but the Jews, the Communists, and Catholics, the U.S. Supreme Court, the President of the United States and the United Nations. Hatred," Durr noted, "seemed to take in everybody."

Not a single black citizen of Lowndes County was there; not only were they denied admission to the courthouse (unless they were on trial), they couldn't even step on the courthouse lawn.