Samuel "Sammy" Leamon Younge, Jr.

Samuel "Sammy" Leamon Younge, Jr. (1944-1966) was a civil rights and voting rights activist and the first African American university student killed during the civil rights movement. A Tuskegee native, he was attending Tuskegee University when Standard Oil gas station attendant Marvin Segrest shot him as he was attempting to use a whites-only bathroom. He was an active member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a leader of the Tuskegee Institute Advancement League (TIAL). He participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery Marches and aided SNCC in voter registration drives in Mississippi in 1965. Along with 40 other civil rights martyrs slain between 1954 and 1968, he is honored on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. SNCC subsequently joined the anti-war opposition, stating: "The murder of Samuel (Younge) in Tuskegee, Alabama, is no different than the murder of peasants in Vietnam, for both (Younge) and the Vietnamese sought, and are seeking, to secure the rights guaranteed them by law."

Tuskegee, Alabama · United States