Virginia<\/a>. \u201cBut guess what? You just magnified her.\u201d<\/p>\nThe 1,200 mourners in the room rose to their feet and applauded as the mood ebbed between somber reflection, defiance and a celebration of 32-year-old Heather Heyer\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d rather have my child,\u201d Bro, Heyer\u2019s mother, continued. \u201cBut by golly, if I\u2019ve got give her up, we\u2019re going to make it count.\u201d She urged the crowd, so large it had spilled on to the street outside, to honour the memory of her daughter by channeling \u201canger into righteous action\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want this to spread, I don\u2019t want this to die. This is just the beginning of Heather\u2019s legacy. This is not the end of her legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heyer, who worked as paralegal at local law firm, was killed a few dozen metres from the old theatre in a terror attack allegedly perpetrated by white nationalist James Fields. The 20-year-old rammed his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of anti-fascist protests on Saturday afternoon, sending bodies flying into the air and wounding 19 other people.<\/p>\n
Heyer\u2019s murder came on a weekend of violence as hundreds of neo-Nazis and white nationalists descended on Charlottesville, a small, liberal city in central Virginia, ostensibly to protest against the city\u2019s attempt to remove a monument to confederate general Robert E Lee in a public park.<\/p>\n
Relics of the city\u2019s racist past are not hard to find. The Paramount Theater was constructed in 1931 during an era of legalized racial segregation. Black and white people had used separate entrances, and sat in separate sections of the cinema to watch the same movies until the abolition of Jim Crow.<\/p>\n
But before the assembled mourners on Wednesday, the city sought to share a message of diversity and inclusivity embodied through Heyer\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
The Rev Harold Bare of the local Covenant church, where Heyer had worshipped, told the service he had been asked by Bro to \u201cspeak about diversity\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said that 36 years ago, when he first arrived at the church, \u201cour congregation was a modest size of one colour, totally\u201d, but it now welcomed those from all communities in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll humanity is family created by God,\u201d Bare said.<\/p>\n
Mark Heyer, Heather\u2019s father, held back tears as he told the service he was \u201coverwhelmed by the rainbow of colors in this room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how Heather was. It didn\u2019t matter who you were or where you were from, if she loved you, you were stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her grandfather, Elwood Shrader, said: \u201cIn our family, all lives matter. She absorbed that quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n
There had been concerns that the service would be been targeted by the far right, after posting to the extremist website the Daily Stormer showed posters encouraging members to \u201cget people on the ground\u201d.<\/p>\n
But, under heavy security, with dozens of local and state police patrolling inside and outside the building, the service passed with little incident.<\/p>\n