Selma ’65

to brian richard mori

The stories of Viola Liuzzo and Gary Thomas Rowe are part of the historical record. Selma ’65 is a work of dramatic fiction created as a one-person play. The play is dedicated to Selma 1965 and is a creation of my imagination.

Cast of Characters

Viola Liuzzo / Tommy Rowe, a white woman and white man; one actress plays both roles.

Prologue

Viola is beside a tree, wearing 1960s-style cat glasses and talking directly to the audience. She smokes a cigarette.

viola

I am always walking past this tree. I’m barefoot, holding my father’s hand. He only has one. He lost his hand in the coal mines. I love that hand of his, cracked and soft at the same time.

He tugs mine suddenly.

[sees something] Darkness. The lights go out. I don’t know where I am. My heart leaves my body.

[her accent becomes more Southern as she reminisces] What happened, Daddy?

No, I want to look.

Wait, I can’t see. What was that in the tree, Daddy?

Why? I don’t understand. I want to see. [her Southern accent fades]

I always wanted to see—just that kind of person. But the mind is like a clean piece of paper, and certain things they’re like ink on a press, they leave their mark. The mind is innocent until it’s not. Memory’s written like a dark, black message. There are things I need to erase. What I did to Leroy.

This road in the Lowndes Swamp is lined with trees. As I’m driving, the nightmare of the first tree seems to go on forever—I see an explosion of trees. Tree, tree, tree, tree. [singing slowly] “We shall overcome, we shall ohhh . . . ”

[finds a rock] My daddy was a coal miner. He knew rocks that light themselves on fire. “Make a trail of rocks if you get lost,” my daddy told me. Make a trail of rocks if you get lost. Coal.

[sets down the coal and finds another rock, holding it up to the light] Have you ever seen smoke trapped in a rock? Smoky quartz from the Lowndes Swamp earth.

[sets down the quartz, trying to make a trail of rocks] I’m lost in limbo.

That march was the most beautiful day of my life.

Images appear on a screen, and a voice-over of Martin Luther King Jr. at the end of the Selma Voting March: “Now, it is not an accident that one of the great marches of American history should terminate in Montgomery, Alabama.”

It is 1965. Viola is driving her car, speaking to Leroy Moton beside her; she puts away her cigarettes.

To see Martin Luther King speak today, Leroy. “It is normalcy all over Alabama that prevents the Negro from becoming a registered voter.” First, Bloody Sunday, then Turnaround Tuesday, and finally today, the Selma Voting March made it to Montgomery. Three times a charm. All of us marching together today, singing—the children lining the road, the American flags. What will your dreams be tonight, Leroy?

[laughing] Voting, yes. Please, I said, call me Viola.

Don’t worry—I want to make one more trip to Montgomery to get the last of the marchers. Everyone’s so tired, but I won’t sleep tonight. You know those times you feel you’re being called? I know what it means, Leroy, a white lady like me and a young black man like you, but we have to live by our actions. What an action, when you think of it: just two people sitting, driving in a car. I’ve never been happier than tonight.

You’re not a big talker, but the way you dedicated yourself to the marchers these past few days. What makes you so brave?

When I was eighteen, I didn’t have half your integrity—to see that in someone your age, it cheers your spirits. I hope my sons grow up to be like you. I’m sorry I talk so much.

There’s nothing to be afraid of. After we get back to Selma, I’ll have...