Sammy Younge Jr.
American activist
Samuel Leamon Younge Jr. (November 17, 1944 – January 3, 1966) was a civil rights and voting rights activist who was murdered for trying to desegregate a "whites only" restroom. Younge was an enlisted service member in the United States Navy, where he served for two years before being medically discharged. Younge was an active member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a leader of the Tuskegee Institute Advancement League.
Younge was the first African-American university student to be murdered in the United States due to his actions in support of the Civil Rights Movement. Three days after his death, SNCC became the first civil rights organization in the United States of America to oppose the Vietnam War, partly on the grounds that like Younge, innocent civilians should not face deadly violence.
Early life
Samuel Leamon Younge Jr. was born on November 17, 1944, in Tuskegee, Alabama. His father, Samuel Younge Sr., was an occupational therapist, and his mother was a local schoolteacher. From the age of 12 to 14, from 1956 to 1958, Younge attended Cornwall Academy, in Massachusetts.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sammy Younge Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.