ELIJAH PARISH LOVEJOY News Organization: THE ALTON OBSERVER Died 1837 Location: THE UNITED STATES Bio: Shot to death Nov. 7, two days before his 35th birthday, as he sought to protect one of his newspaper’s newly delivered presses from a pro-slavery mob. Mobs had previously destroyed three other presses. He was a Presbyterian minister and a fervent abolitionist who was scorned by a pro-slavery mob even on the way to his grave. An abolitionist newspaper, the Emancipator Extra, praised him in poetry and prose as "liberty's martyr." Today, Colby College gives a press freedom award in his name.