The informant : the FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the murder of Viola Liuzzo / Gary May.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

May, Gary, 1944- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Liuzzo, Viola, 1925-1965.

Liuzzo, Viola.

Rowe, Gary Thomas.

Ku Klux Klan (1915- ).

United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

United States.

Murder--Alabama--Lowndes County.

Murder.

Civil rights workers--Alabama--Biography.

Civil rights workers.

Informers--Alabama--Biography.

Informers.

Undercover operations--Alabama.

Undercover operations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource (xv, 431 p.) ) ill., ports.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2005]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In The Informant, historian Gary May reveals the untold story of the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo, shot to death by members of the violent Birmingham Ku Klux Klan at the end of Martin Luther King's historic Voting Rights March in 1965. The case drew national attention and was solved almost instantly, because one of the Klansman present during the shooting was Gary Thomas Rowe, an undercover FBI informant. At the time, Rowe's information and subsequent testimony were heralded as a triumph of law enforcement. But as Gary May reveals in this provocative and powerful book, Rowe's history of collaboration with both the Klan and the FBI was far more complex.Based on previously unexamined FBI and Justice Department Records, The Informant demonstrates that in their ongoing efforts to protect Rowe's cover, the FBI knowingly became an accessory to some of the most grotesque crimes of the Civil Rights era--including a vicious attack on the Freedom Riders and perhaps even the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.A tale of a renegade informant and an intelligence system ill-prepared to deal with threats from within, The Informant offers a dramatic and cautionary tale about what can happen when secret police power goes unchecked.

Contents:

Undercover man

One hell of a good job

Serious business

Bombing matters

Cat and mouse

Season of suffering

Night riders

This horrible brew

A slight case of murder

Parable of the two goats

A temple of justice

Taking the sun away

Digging in

Pain and anguish

A search for the truth

Dealing with the Devil.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages 373-416) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786611722418

9781281722416

1281722413

9780300129991

0300129998

OCLC:

1013956675