The following events occurred in May 1959:
May 1, 1959 (Friday) W. E. B. Du Bois was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize during his visit to Moscow. Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah and Guinea's President Sekou Toure announced the merger of their two nations into the Union of African States, which later grew to include Mali in 1961. The Union was dissolved in 1963 after the creation of the Organization of African Unity. Jean Hoerni filed a patent application (No. 3,064,167) for the planar process under the name "method of protecting exposed p-n junctions at the surface of silicon transistors by oxide masking technique". The process, which protected the transistor from contamination, made mass production of the transistors feasible, and has been called "after the invention of the junction transistor, the most important invention of microelectronics". The NASA spaceflight center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was named for Robert H. Goddard. A Little Joe Project Coordination Meeting, attended by personnel from Space Task Group, McDonnell, and Wallops Island, was held for the first time. The purpose of the meeting was to determine the status of various developmental phases and whether or not proper coordination was being effected with other related projects in the Mercury program (Big Joe, Mercury-Atlas, Mercury-Redstone, and Mercury-Jupiter). The important factor with regard to the latter item was whether or not a reasonable launch schedule could be established and maintained.
May 2, 1959 (Saturday) Four white men in Tallahassee, Florida, kidnapped and raped a black woman, Betty Jean Owens, near the campus of Florida A & M University, beginning a case that attracted nationwide attention. Ultimately, an all-white jury convicted the four men, and on June 22, Judge W. May Walker sentenced them to life in prison. Jerry Unser Jr. was fatally injured while practicing for the Indianapolis 500. Unser's car struck a retaining wall at and burst into flame, and he died 15 days later from his burns. As a result, Indy racing officials required all drivers to wear fire-resistant suits in practice and in competition.
May 3, 1959 (Sunday) A body was found in the shallow waters of a slough (wetland) of the Columbia River near Camas, Washington, and soon confirmed to be that of 10-year-old Susan Martin, one of five members of a Portland, Oregon, family that had vanished almost five months earlier. On December 7, 1958, Ken and Barbara Martin, and their three daughters, had left home to buy a Christmas tree, and never returned. The mystery garnered national attention. The next day, the body of 12-year-old Virginia Martin was found at the Bonneville Dam. No trace of the other three victims was ever located, nor was their car, a red and white station wagon. After more than sixty years, the mystery of what happened to the Martin family would remain unsolved.
May 4, 1959 (Monday) The first Grammy Awards were bestowed by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, in a ceremony held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. The Music from Peter Gunn, by Henry Mancini, was album of the year, and Doenico Modugno's Volare was song of the year. The Champs' Tequila won the award for best rhythm & blues performance. "Grammy" is an abbreviation for the Gramophone Award. On a day on which a white man was exonerated from charges of rape of a black woman, and a black man convicted of rape of a white woman, Robert Williams of the NAACP declared in Monroe, North Carolina, "We must meet violence with violence". In a rare appearance before Congress, former U.S. President Harry S. Truman testified in favor of a repeal of the two-terms amendment. "You don't have to be very smart to know that an officeholder who is not eligible for re-election loses a lot of influence."