What’s in a Name: Viola Liuzzo, revisited

Inkjet prints, 32″x40″, 2017

Poster 1 of 12

Poster 7 of 12

Poster 9 of 12

Poster 12 of 12

I revisited my initial study (What’s in a Name: Viola Liuzzo) as an underlying grid to arrange and reveal more content behind Viola Liuzzo’s name. Across the 12 posters a passage is revealed as other surrounding content transitions from primary to supporting content.

Photographs gathered from various news clippings, FBI reports and book, From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo, Mary Stanton (1998). Photos of her park’s groundbreaking taken by myself.

Passage on posters by Rev. Malcolm Boyd as recorded in same book, From Selma to Sorrow, page 224:

It wasn’t easy knowing you, or even hearing you. I felt in fact, that you were often strong-willed, uncharitable, and impolite. But I saw you pouring out your life. I resented that too, as I safely clutched my own. But I did see you though sometimes I didn’t want you to know it.

Yes, I heard the criticism—and I joined in. At times I thought I hated you, because what you said and did cut so painfully against my mask, my security, my being.

I miss you very much. Thank you—for who you were and whose you were. You wouldn’t want me to wish you “peace,” and I could never think of you in any misalliance with a false truce or easy compromise.

But I do, with all heart, wish you peace with deep restlessness, a cock crowing at dawn to announce battle, and love to heal all the necessary wounds.

–Rev. Malcolm Boyd, “To a Prophet Dying Young”

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*Photo Credit: Matthew Garin (first image)