Five Years Ago Today: Heather Heyer Killed at Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

Five years ago today, Heather Heyer was killed by James Fields when he rammed his car through a group of counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, shortly after Donald Trump became president.

Unite the Right, which was organized by neo-Nazis Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, attracted white supremacists and far-right political groups to Charlottesville in August 2017. The protest was ostensibly organized to stop the removal of the statue of General Lee in downtown Charlottesville, but the event quickly became a smorgasbord of white nationalist grievances, most notably the conspiracy theory that immigration was being used intentionally to replace white and European-descended people in the United States.

I have written about replacement theory here, but a lot of people have since, then, too (and better), most notably Reece Jones’s book White Borders and Define America’s report “Uncovering the tactics of anti-immigration messaging on YouTube“ on the small cadre of people perpetuating this conspiracy theory.

Although the battle over confederate statues preceded Trump’s win in the 2016 election, the United the Right rally was interpreted by many as representing an escalation of violence and anti-immigrant rhetoric that was made permissible by the president.

Fields would later be convicted of murdering Heather Heyer, but Heather became a symbol for many people of the dangers of white nationalist violence and the importance of public action. And the word “Charlottesville”, which was until 2017 a small college town that few people have visited, has become a shorthand for the resurgence of white supremacist violence.

I happen to be in Charlottesville, Virginia, today on this tragic anniversary. I am part of a workshop related to a collection of chapters that will become The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Immigration Law hosted by the University of Virginia Law School.

Since I’m here, the geographer in me can’t help but visit the actual sites of this tragedy to understand what these social spaces look like and feel like, where they are situated, see what (if any) traces of these events are left in the landscape.

Yesterday I posted a video on TikTok at the site of what used to be known as Lee’s Park (now Emancipation Park or Market Street Park).

@austinkocherI am standing in what used to be known as Lee’s Park where five years ago today and tomorrow the unite the right rally brought together white supremacists here in Charlottesville Virginia. #charlottesville #endracism

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This morning I got up early and went to 4th Street where Heather Heyer was struck to get a sense of what it is like. Buildings on either side of the street provide no shelter or room to run and the sidewalks are shallow. I imagined a car barreling through a crowd and it’s immediately clear why it was so deadly: there is nowhere to run or take shelter. It’s a kill zone.

The street has been renamed Heather Heyer Way. I happen to have my camera with me on this trip so here are some photos from what Heather Heyer Way looks like today, five years after these tragic events.

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