May Day was a festive campus event staged from 1920 through the 1950s, marking the height of spring, the advent of summer, and the end of the school year. The events varied year to year, but typically climaxed with the crowning of the May Queen. Long before homecoming parades, homecoming queens, and accompanying festivities, May Day provided an impressive campus release from the day-to-day academic grind. By the 1960s, alumni associations, fraternities, sororities, and football games had, nationwide, effectively created a new fall celebration, homecoming, displacing May Day. The 1960s also brought a new academic calendar, with classes ending in April and exams in early May. Inadvertently, commencement ceremonies preempted May Day celebrations.
A May Day of sorts occurred as part of a “mock carnival” held on May 15, 1920. The Y.W.C.A. had organized the event as a fund raiser. As part of the carnival, the May Queen and her attendants paraded down Fifth Street to the queen’s throne in a “beautifully decorated pony cart.” Two clowns followed, “rolling a wheel barrow.” Hawaiian ukuleles serenaded the May queen’s court. Madame Zingaria, a palmist, was on hand to prophesy futures. A “wounded American soldier, hobbling on a crutch, sold peanuts and candy.” The Greenville News praised the Y.W.C.A. for organizing the entertaining campus event.
A grander celebration occurred in 1921 as part of Field Day. The Y.W.C.A. organized it, again as a fund raiser. The day began with a “beautiful” parade featuring “the float with the Queen of May” and her court proceeding down Evans Street and then up Fifth to the campus. Greenville’s mayor led the procession along with superintendent of schools riding on horseback. Once the parade arrived on campus, Miss Florence Corbett was crowned May Queen by her knight, William Wright (the president’s son). Athletic contests entertained those attending. Carnival booths were on the west side of campus.
In 1926, May Day morphed into a May Queen celebration held on May 1. The campus newspaper, the Teco Echo, declared it “the most beautiful pageant ever given at the college.” The 1926 Tecoan added to the grandness of the event by publishing a full-page picture of the May Queen in white gown. The following year, 1927, the “May Festival” grew even larger with some 2500 people reportedly witnessing the crowning. The 1927 Tecoan included a full-page portrait of the May Queen, as well as a full-page photo-collage of scenes from May Day, 1926.
Sponsorship changed over the years with the Poe, Lanier, and Emerson Societies as well as the Student Government Association organizing May Day events. In 1957, when it rained, the festivities were held inside Wright Auditorium and “enjoyed by a large crowd.” In 1959, “an event of delicate charm” was held poolside in Christenbury Gym, creating a “fairyland experience when young girls dressed in satin lavenders announced the entering queens, and baby white ducks paddled through the pool water.” These unique variations aside, the feminine mystique of May Day diminished markedly as the campus became more oriented, in the 1950s and 1960s, to male-dominated Pirate athletic culture, leaving May Day celebrations a thing of the past.
Sources
- “Field Day.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. 8, no. 4. June, July, August 1921. Pp. 327-328.
- “May Day 1957.” Buccaneer. 1958. Pp. 196-199.
- “May Day” and “May Day ’58.” Buccaneer. 1959. Pp. 184-185, 262-263.
- “May Festival is Beautiful Event.” Teco Echo. Vol. 2, no. 1. May 10, 1927. P. 1.
- “Mock Carnival Great Success.” Greenville News. May 18, 1920. P. 1.
- “Poe Society; Emerson Society; Lanier Society.” Tecoan. 1945. Pp. 105-107.
- “The May Festival Most Beautiful.” Teco Echo. Vol. 1, no. 10. May 11, 1926. Pp. 1, 3.
- “Training School Field Day Exercises Was Big Success.” Greenville News. May 3, 1921. Pp. 1, 4.
- “Virginia Blount, May Queen;” “Scenes from May Day, 1926;” “Jokes.” Tecoan. 1927.
Title: May Day
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 7/18/2019