He had received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at the University of California at Los Angeles. The Newark campus looked good to him and his wife, Gail, especially after their first experience with snow-103 inches in one winter at Colgate. The focus of May's research is American political and diplomatic history since 1945. Currently, he's working on a book about the case of Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights worker killed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 during the voting rights march in Alabama. If you have to ask, you're not going to understand the answer,' he said.
Teaching is a lot like that.
May's presentations and lectures are delivered in a loud, energetic style. History, in many ways, is an extended story. I've had students tell me that my classes seem to be a series of stories that they find interesting. Documentary video plays an important part in May's classes. He uses film footage of the Civil Rights movement, student protests and the Kennedy years.