Viola Virginia Hyatt is known by many names. Her family and neighbors in the community of Rabbittown simply called her Viola. The rest of Calhoun County, as well as the state of Alabama and the nation, knows her as the "Alabama Axe Murderess" or the "Torso Slayer." But what isn’t known is the motive that earned her these nicknames.

In August, the halls of Mobile’s Most Pure Heart of Mary School were once again filled with the din of students making their way to classes. This may seem an altogether regular occurrence, no different than scenes at public, private, and parochial schools throughout the nation. Still, the presence of students in the storied halls of Heart of Mary is, to some, nothing less than miraculous.

Heart of Mary parish was established in 1899 as a mission church by St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart, an order devoted exclusively to religious service in African American communities. For much of its history, Heart of Mary Church and School occupied the corner of Sengstak Street and Jefferson Davis Avenue (renamed Dr. Martin Luther King Avenue in the mid-1980s), the heart of Mobile’s Black business district. From the parish grew mission churches in two nearby communities, as well as the Knights of Peter Claver. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest group of Black Catholic lay leaders in the world. Heart of Mary parishioners, as well as several of its nuns and priests, played important roles in Mobile’s civil rights movement throughout the twentieth century.