SPEAKER_00: Hey y'all, I'm Erin Haynes. I'm the editor-at-large for The 19th News, a nonprofit newsroom reporting
on gender, politics, and policy. We look at where our democracy remains unfinished, where
women, people of color, and queer people are still not included. And later this month, I'll be your host for a brand new podcast from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network called The Amendment. More on that soon. But for now, I'm excited to be your guest host
for this month of Womanica. This Black History Month, we're talking about revolutionaries,
the Black women who led struggles for liberation from violent governments, colonial rulers, and enslavers. These women had the courage to imagine radically different worlds, and
they used their power to try and pull those worlds into view. Today, we're talking about
an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. As part of the Harlem Nine, she fought for
equal rights and education. Her outspoken activism made her a key figure in the Black
power movement and a target of the FBI. Please meet May Mallory. May was born on June 9,
1927 in Macon, Georgia. When May was a child, her family worried that she wasn't, quote,
going to make it so good in the South. She hated white supremacy and made her disgust
obvious, spurning the racist rules of the Jim Crow era South. Luckily, May and her mother
left Georgia when she was a teenager. They settled in Harlem, joining the millions of
Black Americans leaving the South and relocating to northern cities during the Great Migration.
But May still encountered plenty of racial injustices in her new home. May got a low-paying
job as a domestic worker for white families. Her white employers often patronized and disrespected
May. While she worked in a factory, she witnessed firsthand the inequities Black women faced in the
industry. They were often denied factory jobs outright, and when they were hired,
they were paid poorly and shut out of unions. These experiences radicalized May. She joined
grassroots political organizations and engaged with communist thought. She spent the early 1950s
championing the rights of Black factory workers. But eventually, she set her sights on a more
high-profile fight with the New York City public school system. May was a single mother raising two
children in Harlem. Like many of the Black mothers she knew, May couldn't afford to live in a
neighborhood where schools were well-funded. Harlem children had to attend schools with
overcrowded classrooms, inexperienced teachers, and guidance counselors who failed to push students
towards higher education. So in January 1957, three years after the Brown vs. Board of Supreme
Court decision, May took a stand at a New York City Board of Education public hearing. She
condemned the majority Black schools in Harlem, calling them just as Jim Crow as schools in the
South. May and eight other Black mothers tried to enroll their kids in white junior high schools in
more affluent neighborhoods. They were denied. So the group, dubbed the Harlem Nine by the Black press, sued. They argued that while it may not have been explicitly written into law that the
city's Black children couldn't attend white majority schools, the school system zoning
policies prevented it anyway. The Harlem Nine petitioned, passed out leaflets, and led protests
to publicize their fight. When that failed to get sufficient results, they pulled their kids out of
school completely for 156 days. Eventually, their case was brought before a judge who conceded that
New York City public schools were de facto segregated. It was one of the first big legal victories against school segregation in the North.
May remained politically active, befriending other Black radical thinkers like Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams. In August of 1961, Williams asked May to help him host the Freedom Riders in his hometown
of Monroe, North Carolina. The interracial civil rights group outraged local white civilians in
Monroe. One day, violence erupted during a protest on the courthouse steps. White counter
protesters hurled rocks and insults. May and the other protesters fled to the Black neighborhoods
of town, hoping to avoid a confrontation with a violent mob. May, Williams, and some other Freedom
Riders huddled together by Williams's house, trying to figure out what to do next. Then, a white
couple drove down the street. They claimed to be lost. Williams invited them to stay at his house
with May until the threat of mob violence was gone. But the next day, that same couple told the police
that May and Williams had kidnapped them.
The activists fled Monroe, sure they'd be killed by the KKK if they stuck around. May boarded a bus to Cleveland, hoping not to be recognized from her FBI wanted posters. The agency had long been
illegally spying on May, along with many other Black civil rights activists. Now, they had a chance to pounce. She stayed in hiding in Cleveland for six weeks until she was finally arrested and
imprisoned. May publicized the injustice by writing open letters from her jail cell. She argued that
her false imprisonment demonstrated that America had failed to live up to its democratic ideals. Her
writings from this time contributed to the growing Black Power movement. In February of 1964, May
stood in front of an all-white jury at trial. After deliberating for only 30 minutes, they sentenced
her to 16 to 20 years in prison. Less than a year later, another judge overturned that ruling because
Black residents had been barred from the jury selection process. May was free at last. During the
1960s and 70s, May fought for the release of other wrongly imprisoned Black activists. She continued
her political activism, though she was never celebrated as a hero of the civil rights movement in the way many of her male counterparts were. May passed away in 2007.
All month, we're talking about revolutionaries. For more information, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast. Special thanks to co-creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan for having me as
a guest host. Talk to you tomorrow.
