MAY

May 1, 1901 – professor, poet, and literary critic Sterling Allen Brown was born in Washington D.C.

May 2, 1870 – preacher and evangelist William Seymour was born in Centerville, Louisiana

May 2, 1879 – educator, orator, religious leader, and civil rights activist Nannie Helen Burroughs was born in Orange, Virginia

May 3, 1866 – Memphis Massacre begins. After an altercation between black Union soldiers and white police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, mobs of white residents and police officers rampaged through black neighborhoods. Between May 1 and May 3 they killed 46 black, injured 75 more,  and raped at least 5 black women. Also 91 homes, 8 schools, and 4 churches were burned to the ground. This was the first large-scale racial massacre to erupt in the post-Civil War South.

May 3, 1921 – boxer Walker Smith Jr. better known as Sugar Ray Robinson was born in Ailey, Georgia

May 5, 1865 – pastor and civil rights activist Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. was born in Franklin County, Virginia

May 6, 1931 – legendary baseball player Willie Mays was born in Westfield, Alabama

May 9, 1800 – abolitionist John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut

May 10, 1837 – politician Pinckney Benton Stewart (P.B.S.) Pinchback was born in Macon, Georgia

May 10, 1868 – inventor Shelby J. Davidson was born in Lexington, Kentucky

May 10, 1930 – The National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) was founded at Howard University

May 13, 1913 – boxer Joe Louis was born in Chambers County, Alabama

May 13, 1950 – singer and songwriter Steveland Judkins better known as Stevie Wonder was born in Saginaw, Michigan

May 14, 1890 – educator Rosa Jinsey Young was born in Rosebud, Alabama

May 14, 1985 – Philadelphia police drop an incendiary or explosive device on the home and headquarters of Black MOVE organization. Eleven people, including five children, were killed and 61 homes were engulfed in the fire.

May 16, 1929 – politician John Conyers, Jr. was born in Detroit, Michigan.

May 17, 1954 – the U.S. Supreme Court issues it's landmark decision in the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. This decision overruled in part the decision in the Plessy v Ferguson case.

May 17, 1956 – boxer Sugar Ray Leonard was born in Wilmington, North Carolina

May 18, 1896 – U.S. Supreme Court issued it's landmark decision in the case Plessy v. Ferguson. The court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal"

May 19, 1925 – Muslim minister and black empowerment advocate el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz better known as Malcolm X was born as Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska

May 19, 1930 – playwright Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois

May 20, 1743 – Haitian revolutionary Touissant L'Ouverture was born in Cap-Français, Saint-Domingue

May 25, 1849 – pianist and composer Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins was born in Harris County, Georgia

May 26, 1926 – jazz musician Miles Davis was born in Alton, Illinois

May 27, 1942 – sailor Doris "Dorie" Miller was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor. The citation reads:

For distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. While at the side of his Captain on the bridge, Miller, despite enemy strafing and bombing and in the face of a serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety, and later manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge.

May 28, 1934 – educator and civil rights activist Betty Shabazz was born in Detroit, Michigan

May 28, 1944 – singer, songwriter, and actress Gladys Knight was born in Atlanta, Georgia

May 29, 1841 – Sylvester Magee was born in North Carolina. He is recognized as the last living former enslaved person. 

May 29, 1851 – Sojourner Truth delivers her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech to the Ohio Women's Rights Convention

May 29, 1914 – chemist Henry Ransom Cecil McBay was born in Mexia, Texas

May 30, 1903 – writer, poet, and playwright Countee Cullen was born in Baltimore, Maryland

May 31, 1891 – attorney, politician, and ambassador Jesse Dwight Locker was born in Cincinnati, Ohio

May 31, 1921 – Tulsa Race Massacre also know as the Black Wall Street Massacre began in Tulsa, Oklahoma.