Jonathan P. Baird

On US Highway 80, in the middle of a 54 mile stretch between Selma and Montgomery, there is a small unmarked memorial on the hillside near the road. It is a rectangular, fenced-in space dedicated to the memory of civil rights activist, Viola Liuzzo. The location is near the spot Liuzzo died.

I have now seen it twice and there is an aura of loneliness about this very deserted stop. No Alabama highway signs announce the destination. Driving by, it can be easily missed.

Viola Liuzzo was the only white woman killed down South during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. Her story has largely been forgotten but she was a true hero who demonstrated courage and dedication to social justice. Both times I have viewed the marker, I left feeling the gravity of her actions. She stepped up bravely in a most dangerous situation. It is wrong that she has not been recognized and honored by Alabama and the nation.

Like millions of others, Liuzzo watched the events of Bloody Sunday unfold on TV. It was March 7, 1965. The nation was transfixed watching 600 civil rights marchers led by 25 year old John Lewis get brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers.

For months, efforts in Selma to register black voters had been stalled. Just 156 of Selma’s 15,000 blacks of voting age were on the voting rolls. Tensions had increased dramatically after Alabama state troopers murdered Jimmy Lee Jackson in the nearby town of Marion in February.

After the police violence prevented the Bloody Sunday march, Dr. King asked people who believe in justice to come to Selma. 25,000 people responded, including Liuzzo, who was inspired to make the trek. She had cried watching Bloody Sunday. She tried to get others to accompany her without success. She drove alone from her home in Detroit to Selma.

Liuzzo’s husband, Jim Liuzzo, was not happy his wife was going to Alabama but he could not dissuade her. The Liuzzos had five children. They both knew it was dangerous. Viola knew the South well. As a younger person she had lived in Jim Crow Georgia and in Tennessee but she was determined to go.

After that first attempted march on Bloody Sunday, activists obtained a court order that permitted a new protest and march. It occurred March 21-25, 1965. During her time in Selma, Liuzzo marched the first day. Then she worked at a hospitality desk welcoming and registering volunteers. Later she worked at a first aid station. She allowed her car to be used to ferry marchers to locations they needed to go.

After the march, she was planning to go home the next day. She spent her last day driving people back and forth between Selma and Montgomery. She and a 19 year old black man, Leroy Moton, were on their last run back to Montgomery when they were followed by a car full of Klansmen.

It is possible the Klansmen noticed her Michigan plates and it is also possible they saw a black man and a white woman in the car together. Southern whites of that era hated outside agitators (especially from the North) and race-mixing. Whether what happened was spontaneous or planned remains a subject of controversy.

To this day, the details of the attack are disputed but the prevailing story was that after a high speed chase, Liuzzo, who was the driver, was shot and murdered by one of the Klan members who shot from a car racing alongside. Liuzzo’s car went off the road, crashing into a fence. Moton survived but Liuzzo died instantly from the gunshots to her head.

The case was quickly solved because among the four Klansmen in the car was an undercover FBI informant, Gary Tommy Rowe. Rowe reported to the FBI about the events of the evening. He had a reputation for violence both because he boasted about it and also because he had previously beaten Freedom Riders. The other Klansmen in the car fingered Rowe as the trigger man. Many questions arose about Rowe’s conduct and why he had not acted to save Liuzzo.

The FBI and its Director, J. Edgar Hoover, played a despicable role in these events. Hoover opposed the civil rights movement as a threat to civil order. In an effort to deflect attention from the FBI’s negligence, Hoover conducted a smear campaign against Liuzzo. I believe it was this smear campaign, similar to what they conducted against Dr. King, that erased Liuzzo from our history.

The smear campaign was vicious. Hoover leaked rumors to the press that Liuzzo was a drug addict, that she was having an affair with Leroy Moton, that she was emotionally unstable and that she had abandoned her children. Hoover scapegoated Liuzzo to hide the FBI’s disgraceful role, especially the fact a key FBI informant was in the car with the Klansmen.

The Liuzzo family suffered greatly. Local Detroit racists burnt a cross on their lawn, fired bullets into their home.and dumped garbage on their lawn. The Liuzzo children were called “n—er lovers” and actually had rocks thrown at them on their way to school. Hate mail and obscene phone calls were relentless. It got so bad Jim Liuzzo had to hire an armed security guard to protect his home. The emotional stress on the family was enormous.

After a hung jury in the first state court murder trial, the Klansmen charged in Liuzzo’s murder were acquitted by an all-white male jury. The racism in those proceedings was off-the-charts. In open court, Matt Murphy, lead defense counsel for the Klansmen, called Liuzzo “ a white n—er who turned her car over to a black n—er for the purpose of hauling n——ers and communists back and forth”. That vignette captures the flavor of the trial.

The Klansmen in the car, with the exception of Rowe were later convicted in federal court on the charge of conspiracy to violate Liuzzo’s civil rights. They received 10 year sentences. Rowe was also subsequently indicted for murder but that case failed. The court said Rowe had immunity from prosecution because of a deal he made for testifying against the other Klansmen.

In 1983, 18 years after her murder, in a civil case in federal court, the Liuzzo family sued the FBI for its responsibility in Viola’s death. The Court rejected the Liuzzos’ suit, unbelievably saying that the plaintiffs failed to show the FBI had been negligent in directing their agent. To add insult to injury, the Court ordered the Liuzzos to pay the government’s court costs of $80,000. After the TV show 20/20 aired a segment, the Justice Department dropped the court cost claim.

The Liuzzo marker on US Highway 80 has been repeatedly desecrated and defaced. In 1997, vandals painted a large Confederate flag across the face of the stone. This seems symbolic of the ugly effort to slander and discredit Viola Liuzzo. She deserves so much better. She died at age 39. She stands in the best tradition of Americans who selflessly fought white supremacy, racism, and segregation.

Her death added much impetus to President Johnson’s effort to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Maybe someday America will have a different take on who its real heroes are.

Almost nine years ago, I started writing about Donald Trump and fascism. Then I raised the question whether Trump and his MAGA movement were fascist. My Jewish, anti-fascist antenna were buzzing.

At that time, many political observers dismissed the idea. They typically pointed out the differences between classical German and Italian fascism and what was going on in the United States. They didn’t engage the possibility that fascism might take new forms in different historical periods.

In 2024, the verdict is in. Trump and his MAGA movement can be accurately classified as fascist. Of course, the American variant of fascism is not a duplicate of past models but the word still fits. Because the word remains a political football used by both sides, I will make the case for why the label is appropriate for Trump.

Fascism requires an us and a them. In Germany it was the Nazi Aryans and the Jews. In America, Trump is demonizing immigrants (who are largely people of color) and he is setting them against white Christians. Back in 2015, it started with him talking about Mexico sending rapists. He later objected to immigrants from “shithole countries”. Now he falsely claims Haitians are eating pets. He refers to immigrants as “vermin”.

Trump has strung together a horrifying pack of lies designed to dehumanize and create a hated other. He makes unsupported wild assertions about foreign insane asylums and prisons being emptied with those inhabitants coming to America. He says immigrants commit horrendous crimes because “it’s in their genes” and “they are poisoning the blood of our country”. This is straight-up Hitler-talk out of Mein Kampf.

Trump has been talking about “the enemy within”, invoking the idea that the military should be used against protesting Americans. He says America is “an occupied country” awaiting its liberation from migrant criminals who are “the most violent people on earth”. The talk has no relationship to what is actually going on in America. Trump’s hellscape does not exist. As Ashley Parker wrote in the Washington Post:

“In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped.”

Fascists sell fear of the other and as the election gets closer, the rhetoric has ramped up. Aaron Rupar writes:

“Trump’s closing message is a full-blown hate campaign against black and brown people. Historians will look back in astonishment that this terrifying reality wasn’t the subject of wall to wall coverage and commentary in weeks leading up to the election. He’s not hiding anything.”

During the Republican National Convention we all saw the signs “Mass Deportation Now”. Trump and his advisors plan a vast 21st century version of concentration camps designed for mass detention prior to mass expulsions. They plan to begin in January 2025.

Such drastic action requires a more compliant press that will not get in the way. Contrary to the First Amendment, Trump has called for the broadcast licenses of CBS and ABC to be revoked because he believes they have been unfair to him. He has said MSNBC should be investigated for “treason”. He has called for revising libel laws so it would be easier to sue reporters and media outlets for critical coverage.

Part of the road to authoritarianism is the emasculation of a free press. Government action against journalists is highly chilling. Trump wants a cowed media afraid to criticize him because of possible consequences. A weak press devoted to propaganda praising the Great Leader is the fascist norm.

Timothy Snyder has said fascism is about a cult of the will. MAGA is a cult of personality and reason takes a back seat to emotion. Fascists have no use for the rule of law or constitutions. Violence and lies are central to the fascist project.

Trump is an embodiment of the Big Lie. He pushes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and he clings to the utterly discredited mythology he won. All who care about democracy must be vigilant about the Trump team’s efforts after the 2024 election and before the new president is inaugurated. They were bumbling in the aftermath of the 2020 election. They have had four years to plan for this upcoming moment.

Fascists want power at all costs. If Trump is successful, do not be surprised to see him fire the entire senior staff of the DOJ, FBI, and top military staff in all branches. Loyalty to Trump will be the overriding job qualification. If Trump loses, expect many state-level election challenges and expect him to float the narrative of widespread non-citizen voting. He has raised the spectre of hordes of illegals crossing the border to somehow mysteriously vote. This fits in neatly with the far right’s Great Replacement Theory.

It should not be surprising that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley , has called Trump “a total fascist”. He saw enough.

The historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat says that since 2015 Trump has been taking Americans and his followers on a journey conditioning them step by step instilling hatred in a group, then escalating. Trump has gotten way too much of a pass on his absurd verbiage. I worry that as a society we have become dulled and anesthetized to the danger.

An earlier generation of Americans had a noble history of opposing fascism in World War 2. Now it is our turn.

We have just witnessed two, back-to-back monster hurricanes, Helene and Milton. The storms were supercharged by climate change. The storms passed over ultra-warm temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. The heated waters acted like a fuel, intensifying the hurricanes and making them far more powerful than they might otherwise have been.

A new study by researchers with the World Weather Attribution, an international network of scientists who conduct rapid studies to assess the impact of climate change in major weather events found climate change made Hurricane Helene stronger and wetter. Ben Clarke, an author of the report called climate change “a total game changer” for hurricanes like Helene and he said:

“We found that essentially all aspects of [Hurricane Helene] were amplified by climate change to different degrees, and we’ll see more of the same as the world continues to warm.”

Clarke explained that it is not the frequency of hurricanes which has changed. It is the intensification of storms. The study found that rainfall from Hurricane Helene was about 10% heavier due to human-caused climate change and winds were intensified 11%. There is no mystery about what is behind the climate change. There is a scientific consensus: burning fossil fuels adds heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere which causes both air and water temperatures to rise.

The summer of 2024 was the hottest on record and this year is likely to be the warmest ever measured. Up until this year, 2023 was the warmest year on record. The warming trend is beyond dispute. In his book, The Heat Will Kill You First, Jeff Goodell writes:

“Right now we are more than halfway to 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) from preindustrial temperatures, which scientists have long warned is the threshold for dangerous climate change. The reports of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are full of harrowing details of what might happen to our world with 3.6 degrees of warming, from collapsing ice sheets to crop-killing drought.”

I have been struck by how in spite of increasing and repeated climate disasters, politicians on both sides fail to put the superstorms in context and sideline the subject of climate change. They minimize the gravity of the amplified heat. There is a tendency to see each storm in isolation like they are unrelated and to miss the pattern in how our world has changed.

This has been reflected in the failure of both parties to situate climate change as a central issue in the presidential campaign. Undeniably though, the position of the Republicans has been far worse. Trump calls the science of climate change a ”scam” and a “hoax”. He mindlessly promises to “drill, baby, drill”. He wants to do away with new pollution standards for vehicles and power plants. And it is hard to think he is kidding: in his first term, he rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations.

Republican climate denialism is so extreme that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law requiring that climate change will not be considered when crafting energy policy. His legislation literally removed the words “climate change” from many state laws. This is turning science denial into state policy. Considering its recent hurricane history, Florida should make the ostrich the state bird.

As for the Democrats, at least Vice-President Harris calls climate change “an existential threat” and says the United States needs to act urgently to address it. She is not a climate change denier. She wants to expand the government’s role fighting climate change by regulating fossil fuels and by incentivizing the use of renewable energy.

At the same time, Harris has not made climate change policy a central pillar of her campaign. She doesn’t talk about it much. She has backed away from Green New Deal rhetoric and has cast herself as a pro-business pragmatist. She has bragged about America’s level of oil production during her tenure as Vice-President and she reversed her position on fracking.

So we have one entirely retrograde party that will do the bidding of fossil fuel executives and the other party taking an ambiguous pro-environment position. At least the Biden-Harris administration set a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.

What is missing is any sense of urgency around climate. Extreme heat is remaking our planet and the clock is ticking. How much time do we have before the climate becomes unbearable or uninhabitable for life? Greta Thunberg has written:

“The climate crisis is about time. If you leave out the aspect of time, then it is just one topic among other topics. If you take away the countdown, then a collapsing glacier, a forest fire or a record heatwave is nothing more than three independent news events – a series of isolated natural disasters. If you fail to include the aspect of time, the climate crisis is not a crisis.”

The human response to climate change matters tremendously. An effective response could lessen the collective harm of unregulated greenhouse gas emissions. We can effect the speed and extent of the rising heat. That alone could save millions of lives and allow for the survival of more biodiversity.

Part of the climate denialism we are seeing now is the retreat into conspiracy theories and misinformation. Twitter/X is full of absurd postings about globalist cabals geoengineering the weather.

Climate denialism endangers all humanity and all life on earth. As humans, we have an amazing ability to be diverted by distractions. I am reminded of that book title Amusing Ourselves to Death. In this election we must vote like climate matters because it does.

There is a quote from the writer, Edward Abbey, that I have always liked:

“…there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good.”

Those words could describe the Alabama lawyer, Fred Gray. On my recent trip South organized by the Nation Magazine, our group had an opportunity to meet with Attorney Gray in Tuskegee. He is now 93. He became a lawyer back in the 1950’s when there were hardly any African Americans able to be in that role. Back then it was very dangerous to be a Black lawyer in the South, especially one devoted to civil rights.

Gray has had a remarkable career. He grew up in segregation, opened his law office in 1954 and his early goal was “to destroy everything segregated I could find”.

Dr. King once called Gray “chief counsel of the protest movement”. For years, he was counsel to both Dr King and Rosa Parks whenever they needed legal help. Along with a university professor, Jo Ann Robinson, Gray planned the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He became a lawyer for 15 year old Claudette Colvin and for Rosa Parks. Both were arrested for refusing to obey a bus driver’s orders to relinquish their bus seat.

Gray had been looking for a chance to challenge the constitutionality of Montgomery’s segregation ordinances and Alabama’s segregation statutes. In the case of Browder v Gayle, Gray challenged the laws that required segregation of the races on city buses in Montgomery.

Gray worked closely with a number of lawyers from the NAACP including Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter as well as a white lawyer, Clifford Durr. There was much personal retaliation directed against Gray by local racists and by the Alabama power structure. He received bomb threats, crank phone calls, hate mail and experienced an attempted stabbing.

After filing Browder v Gayle, he received a draft notice that he was re-classified 1-A. He had had 4-D draft status because he was also minister in a church. Gray was a preacher in the Church of Christ. The head of Selective Service, Lewis Hershey had to intervene the night before Gray was going to be made to ship out for military service. Hershey stopped it. Gray later found out that the Montgomery County and Alabama state bar association had wanted him re-classified and drafted into service.

In June 1956, the federal court in Alabama ruled in the Browder case that city ordinances and the state statute requiring segregation were unconstitutional. The case was appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the Alabama decision and found city and state law violated both the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. This was the first case to establish such a precedent.

In the course of the Montgomery bus boycott, Gray developed a close working relationship with Dr. King. He and Jo Ann Robinson had picked King to be the public spokesman for the bus protest. Gray also became Ralph Abernathy’s lawyer. Abernathy told him, “Fred, you keep me out of jail and I will keep you out of hell”. Abernathy, in addition to being frequently arrested for civil rights activism, was also a Baptist minister.

As is the case now with voter suppression, back in 1957 the White Citizens Councils of Alabama devised a gerrymandering plan to nullify the potential African American vote in Tuskegee. They changed the city boundaries from a square to what Gray called a “25-sided sea dragon”. Lines were drawn to exclude substantially all African Americans while retaining all white votes.

In the case Gomillion v Lightfoot, Gray litigated against the racial gerrymandering being perpetrated by Alabama. The case also went up to the Supreme Court and Gray argued it. He had prevailed on the plaintiffs’ attorneys to argue that Alabama was violating the Fifteenth Amendment right to vote. Surprisingly, in a 9-0 opinion authored by Justice Felix Frankfurter, the Court wrote:

“When a legislature thus singles out a readily isolated segment of a racial minority for special discriminatory treatment, it violates the Fifteenth Amendment.”

Justice Frankfurter saw racial gerrymandering more clearly than the Supreme Court does today. Witness the 2024 South Carolina decision in Alexander v South Carolina that diminished the influence of Black voters through redistricting. In an interesting reversal after the Gomillion case was resolved, the city of Tuskegee asked Gray to become city counsel and he agreed. The Gomillion case was the first racial gerrymandering case that the Supreme Court ever considered.

I also need to mention the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the Pollard et al v United States case. Beginning in 1932 and continuing for 40 years, the U.S. Public Health Service committed a massive fraud against 623 African American men. The men were misled into participating in a study of untreated syphilis sponsored by the government. The Public Health Service failed to disclose to the men both that they had syphilis and that treatment was available.

The Public Health Service led the men to think they were being properly treated for whatever diseases they had when they were not being treated at all. The Study was racially motivated and it discriminated against African Americans in that no whites were selected to participate in the Study. Only those who were poor, uneducated, rural and African American were recruited.

The Public Health Service failed to obtain the participants’ written consent to be part of the Study. There were no rules and regulations governing the Study.

Gray was counsel in the class action against the government. The U.S. government had to admit to wrongdoing and had to compensate the aggrieved parties.

In Gray’s varied and effective efforts to end segregation, it must be noted he was lawyer for the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers on Bloody Sunday in 1965. The publicity from that march led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Gray also successfully litigated the systematic exclusion of blacks from jury service and his cases ended up integrating all state institutions of higher learning in Alabama. On July 7, 2022, President Biden awarded Fred Gray the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

At a time when we are moving backwards on civil rights, it was inspiring to meet a man who has accomplished so much and who was still very much in the fight.

This October marks 15 years since my sister, Lisa Baird, died. The above photo is a favorite of mine. Lisa was spending the summer working at the Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation in Lame Deer , Montana. I wanted to offer a few quotes that evoke Lisa:

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul.” John Keats

“I like unhappy people. I understand them. Suffering creates character and human feeling. Cheerful, happy people seem like idiots to me. They seem to fly over the surface of life and never to know its meaning. They are not close to the heart of humanity but are remote and isolated. Perhaps that is why they can remain cheerful.” Nym Wales

“Unrelenting revolutionary activity coupled with boundless humanity – that alone is the real life-giving force of socialism. A world must be overturned, but every tear that has flowed and might have been wiped away is an indictment; and a man hurrying to perform a great deed who steps on even a worm out of unfeeling carelessness commits a crime.” Rosa Luxemburg

“The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal will take care of themselves. Look after the courts of the poor, who stand most in need of justice. The security of the republic will be found in the treatment of the poor and the ignorant. In indifference to their misery and helplessness lies disaster.” Charles Evans Hughes

“Walk tall as the trees; live strong as the mountains; be gentle as the Spring winds; keep the warmth of Summer in your heart and the Great Spirit will always be with you.” Native American chant