HIGHLIGHT: MICHIGAN
Detroit: Sculptor Austen Brantley, 23, is creating a statue of little-known civil rights figure Viola Liuzzo, the wife and mother of five who drove from Detroit to Alabama in 1965 to support a voting rights march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Liuzzo, who was white, decided to go after seeing footage of marchers being brutally beaten on “Bloody Sunday.” She was helping shuttle fellow activists when bullets were fired from a car filled with Ku Klux Klan members, killing her. Brantley says he didn’t know Liuzzo’s story before he began research for the proposal that won him the commission from the Viola Liuzzo Park Association.