Tamir Rice's mother, Samaria Rice, has been selected as the keynote speaker for this year's commemoration of the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio, the Associated Press reports.
The group planning the event says that Samaria Rice was invited to speak because this year's observance also focuses on the Black Lives Matter movement, which was fueled, in part, by Tamir's death in November 2014.
Tamir, 12, was fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer while he was playing with a pellet gun at a rec center. A grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot the young boy within seconds of responding to a 911 call about a “man” with a gun.
On May 4, 1970, an Ohio National Guardsman fired into a crowd of protesters who were against the Vietnam War, killing four students at Kent State and wounding nine.
Read more at ABC News.