 |
Strange CountryAuthor: Strange Country
Welcome to Strange Country, a podcast devoted to bizarre, surreal and extraordinary stories that make America the weird place it is. Co-hosts Kelly and Beth are former newspaper reporters turned school librarians who have always had a soft spot for a good story--the stranger the better. Discover the first woman to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls and the man who invented "complex marriage" in one of the most successful utopian experiments. Things get weird pretty quickly around here. Language: en Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Strange Country Ep. 309: Viola Liuzzo
Episode 309
Thursday, 19 February, 2026
It may seem the government's technique of denigrating the people they kill to make it appear that the killing was justified is a new fun thing in 2026, but we've been here before. It's likely you've never heard of Viola Liuzzo, the only white woman murdered during the Civil Rights Movement. Her name kept popping up on the social media accounts of historians after the murders of Renee Good and Alexi Pretti, trying to tell us all once again to maybe pay attention to the past. In this episode of Strange Country, cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about Liuzzo's life and how J. Edgar Hoover made sure to smear her as a drug-taking, orgy-loving, baby-neglecting mother who deserved being shot in a head by klansmen. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands Cite your sources: Baird, Jonathan. "The tragic and forgotten story of Viola Liuzzo." The Nation, 4 November 2024, https://www.thenation.com/travellog/the-tragic-and-forgotten-story-of-viola-liuzzo/. Accessed 30 January 2026. Baumgartner, Neil. "Viola Gregg Luizzo." Jim Crow Museum, February 2013, https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/witnesses/violaliuzzo.htm. Accessed 30 January 2026. "City officials unveil new civil rights memorial monument honoring Viola Liuzzo at park bearing her name." City of Detroit, 28 September 2023. Accessed 8 February 2026. Crayton, Kareem. "The Voting Rights Act, Explained." Brennan Center for Justice, 17 July 2023, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-rights-act-explained. Accessed 8 February 2026. Dalby, Beth. "Killed by KKK and Smeared by FBI, Civil Rights Martyr Finally Hailed as Hero." Patch, 7 April 2015, https://patch.com/michigan/ferndale/killed-kkk-and-smeared-fbi-civil-rights-martyr-finally-hailed-hero-0. Accessed 8 February 2026. Daley, David. "John Roberts's Decades-Long Project to Neuter the Voting Rights Act." The Atlantic, 10 December 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2025/12/justice-roberts-voting-rights-act/685193/. Accessed 8 February 2026. di Florio, Paola, director. Home of the Brave. Emerging Pictures, 2004. Amazon Prime. Kaufman, Michael T. "Gary T. Rowe Jr., 64, Who Informed on Klan In Civil Rights Killing, Is Dead (Published 1998)." The New York Times, 4 October 1998, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/04/us/gary-t-rowe-jr-64-who-informed-on-klan-in-civil-rights-killing-is-dead.html. Accessed 8 February 2026. May, Gary. The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo. Yale University Press, 2005.
