Viola Liuzzo / Heather Heyer: Mediating the Antiracist White Female Martyr

Abstract

Both the Martin Luther King Jr.–led Selma voting rights campaign of 1965 and the 2017 “Summer of Hate” in Charlottesville produced a white female martyr. Viola Liuzzo was murdered by KKK members at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that culminated the Selma campaign. Heather Heyer was murdered in a terrorist car attack by a neo-Nazi at the end of the suspended “Unite the Right” rally. Both women were hailed in the press as heroes. Both were misogynistically attacked in white supremacist media—in ways that were almost identical. How can we understand the media representation of white women as racial justice activists and the ways white supremacists understand them in their media platforms? What about the media treatment of African American women activists in Selma and Charlottesville? What's changed, and what hasn't, in fifty years? What can this comparative case study suggest about how the media tends to portray white women and women of color in other social change movements?