Ruben Salazar: Beyond Postage Stamp Memory

In 2008, Ruben Salazar was memorialized on a US postage stamp, one of several media icons of moral courage that included John Hersey, George Polk, and Martha Gellhorn, so honored at the same time. Unlike most postage stamp journalists, Salazar—whose career is a study in civil rights reportage—has largely faded from public memory and journalism history. Salazar lived and died civil rights reporting, killed by authorities while covering a Mexican American Vietnam War protest. This essay traces Salazar’s impact as a narrator of the Mexican American freedom struggle, putting his work at the Los Angeles Times, and at Spanish-language station KMEX, in context with the broader civil rights movement.