Speaker 1: Hey, y'all, I'm Aaron Haynes. I'm the editor at large
Speaker 1: for The Nineteenth News, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender
Speaker 1: politics and policy. We look at where our democracy remains unfinished,
Speaker 1: where women, people of color, and queer people are still
Speaker 1: not included. And later this month, I'll be your host
Speaker 1: for a brand new podcast from the Nineteenth News and
Speaker 1: Wonder Media Network called The Amendment. More on that soon,
Speaker 1: but for now, I'm excited to be your guest host
Speaker 1: for this month of Womanica, this Black History Month, we're
Speaker 1: talking about revolutionaries, the black women who led struggles for
Speaker 1: liberation from violent governments, colonial rulers, and enslavers. These women
Speaker 1: had the courage to imagine radically different worlds, and they
Speaker 1: use their power to try and pull those worlds into view. Today,
Speaker 1: we're talking about an unsung hero of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: As part of the Harlem Nine, she fought for equal
Speaker 1: rights in education. Her outspoken activism made her a key
Speaker 1: figure in the Black power movement and a target of
Speaker 1: the FBI. Please meet May Mallory. May was born on
Speaker 1: June ninth, nineteen twenty seven, in Macon, Georgia. When May
Speaker 1: was a child, her family worried that she wasn't going
Speaker 1: to make it so good in the South. She hated
Speaker 1: white supremacy and made her discussed obvious, spurning the racist
Speaker 1: rules of the Jimcrow era South. Luckily, May and her
Speaker 1: mother left Georgia when she was a teenager. They settled
Speaker 1: in Harlem, joining the millions of black Americans leaving the
Speaker 1: South and relocating to northern cities during the Great Migration.
Speaker 1: But May still encountered plenty of racial injustices in her
Speaker 1: new home. May got a low paying job as a
Speaker 1: domestic worker for white families. Her white employers often patronized
Speaker 1: and disrespected May. While she worked in a factory, she
Speaker 1: witnessed first hand the inequities black women faced in the industry.
Speaker 1: They were often denied factory jobs outright, and when they
Speaker 1: were hired, they were paid poorly and shut out of union.
Speaker 1: These experiences radicalized May. She joined grassroots political organizations and
Speaker 1: engaged with communist thought. She sent the early nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: championing the rights of black factory workers, but eventually she
Speaker 1: set her sights on a more high profile fight with
Speaker 1: the New York City public school system. May was a
Speaker 1: single mother raising two children in Harlem. Like many of
Speaker 1: the black mothers she knew, May couldn't afford to live
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood where schools were well funded. Harlem children
Speaker 1: had to attend schools with overcrowded classrooms, inexperienced teachers, and
Speaker 1: guidance counselors who failed to push students towards higher education.
Speaker 1: So in January nineteen fifty seven, three years after the
Speaker 1: Brown Versus Board of Supreme Court decision, May took a
Speaker 1: stand at a New York City Board of Education public hearing.
Speaker 1: She condemned the majority black schools in Harlem, calling them
Speaker 1: just as Jim Crow as schools in the South. May
Speaker 1: and eight other black mothers tried to enroll their kids
Speaker 1: in white junior high schools in more acts fluent neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: They were denied, So the group dubbed the Harlem Nine
Speaker 1: by the Black press, sued. They argued that while it
Speaker 1: may not have been explicitly written into law that the
Speaker 1: city's black children couldn't attend white majority schools, the school
Speaker 1: system zoning policies prevented it anyway. The Harlem Nine petitioned,
Speaker 1: passed out leaflets, and led protests to publicize their fight.
Speaker 1: When that failed to get sufficient results, they pulled their
Speaker 1: kids out of school completely for one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: six days. Eventually, their case was brought before a judge
Speaker 1: who conceded that New York City public schools were de
Speaker 1: facto segregated. It was one of the first big legal
Speaker 1: victories against school segregation in the North. May remain politically active,
Speaker 1: befriending other black radical thinkers like Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams.
Speaker 1: In August of nineteen sixty one, Williams asked Made to
Speaker 1: help him host the Freedom Writers in his hometown of Monroe,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. The interracial civil rights group outraged local white
Speaker 1: civilians in Monroe. One day, violence erupted during a protest
Speaker 1: on the court house steps. White counter protesters hurled rocks
Speaker 1: and insults. May and the other protesters fled to the
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods of town, hoping to avoid a confrontation with
Speaker 1: a violent mob. May, Williams, and some other Freedom Writers
Speaker 1: huddled together by Williams's house, trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do next. Then a white couple drove down the street.
Speaker 1: They claimed to be lost. Williams invited them to stay
Speaker 1: at his house with May until the threat of mob
Speaker 1: violence was gone. But the next day that same couple
Speaker 1: told the police that May and Williams had kidnapped them.
Speaker 1: The act of his fled Monroe, sure they'd be killed
Speaker 1: by the KKK if they stuck around, May bordered a
Speaker 1: bus to Cleveland, hoping not to be recognized from her
Speaker 1: FBI wanted posters. The agency had long been illegally spying
Speaker 1: on May, along with many other black civil rights activists.
Speaker 1: Now they had a chance to pounce. She stayed in
Speaker 1: hiding in Cleveland for six weeks until she was finally
Speaker 1: arrested and imprisoned. May publicize the injustice by writing open
Speaker 1: letters from her jail cell. She argued that her false
Speaker 1: imprisonment demonstrated that America had failed to live up to
Speaker 1: its democratic ideals. Her writings from this time contributed to
Speaker 1: the growing Black power movement. In February of nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: May stood in front of an all white jury at trial.
Speaker 1: After deliberating for only thirty minutes, they sentenced her to
Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty years in prison. Less than a year later,
Speaker 1: another judge overturned that ruling because black residents had been
Speaker 1: barred from the jury selection process, May was free at last.
Speaker 1: During the nineteen sixties and seventies, May fought for the
Speaker 1: release of other wrongly imprisoned black activists. She continued her
Speaker 1: political activism, though she was never celebrated as a hero
Speaker 1: of the civil rights movement in the way many of
Speaker 1: her male counterparts were. May passed away in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, All Month We're talking about Revolutionaries. For more information,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to co creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan for
Speaker 1: having me as a guest host. Talk to you tomorrow.