Our history and the celebration thereof is mos def a 24/7/365 affair. Below, check out the top 10 Black History moments to go down in May. These are presented in chronological order.
Please holla if there are any additional May Black history events that need to be added to the list — besides my birthday (May 10)!
White domestic terrorist attack in mobile
On May 14, 1867, a race riot, or rather, an attack of white domestic terrorism befell Blacks in Mobile, Ala., after a Black mass meeting. One Black and one white were killed. The Knights of White Camelia, a paramilitary white supremacist organization, founded in Louisiana, instigated the terrorism. During that time, Mobile was home to large numbers of Black Union veterans as well as a sizable number of traitors to the US (i.e. former Confederate soldiers). Racial tensions were elevated, particularly on the current issue of whether African-Americans could be allowed to ride in city streetcars. When the mass meeting of Blacks was “interrupted” by gunfire, along with the two lives lost that day, several others were wounded.
First Kentucky Derby
The first Kentucky Derby was held on May 17, 1875. Oliver Lewis, an African American jockey, won the event.
Septima Clark Born
On May 3, 1898, Septima Clark, educator and civil rights activist, known as “The Grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement,” was born.
Joe Louis Born
On May 14, 1914, the “Brown Bomber,” and heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Louis was born.
Diane Nash Born
On May 15, 1938, Diane Nash was born. Nash is most known for her work as a civil rights activist and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement. Her efforts included the first successful civil rights campaign to integrate lunch counters, participation in the Freedom Rides, co-founding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, co-initiating the Alabama Voting Rights Project and working on the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
Gwendolyn Brooks’ Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
On May 1, 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Years later (1985), she was named Library of Congress’s Consultant in Poetry (later called Poet Laureate).
Brown v. Board of Education
On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
First Freedom Ride
On May 4, 1961 seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C. on two public buses and headed south to test the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that “segregation in interstate bus and rail stations was unconstitutional.” The bus trips organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, became known as the Freedom Rides. During the rides, whites sat in the back of the buses and blacks sat in the front. At rest stops the white riders went into the “black-only” areas and blacks went into the “white-only” areas. On May 14, 1961 this bus with the first group of Freedom Riders was bombed and burned by segregationists outside Anniston, Alabama. The group was attacked in Anniston and Birmingham.
Murder of student protestors by police on Jackson State campus
Jackson State earned national notoriety on May 14, 1970, when two students, Philip Gibbs, a JSU junior, and James Green, a senior at Jim Hill High School, were killed by Jackson police when they opened fire on the campus during a student protest. These killings came 10 days after four white Kent State Students were killed by National Guardsmen on that campus in Ohio. Guess which story got massive media attention and which one was literally ignored?
Bombing of move headquarters
On May 14, 1985, Philadelphia police, with the apparent blessing of Black Mayor Wilson Goode, drops an incendiary or explosive device (aka, a bomb) on the home and headquarters of the all-Black MOVE organization. Eleven people, including five children, were killed and 61 homes were engulfed in the fire.
