This month in Harvard history

May 19, 1959 – To mark the 50th anniversary of A. Lawrence Lowells election to the Harvard presidency, the Harvard Corporation renames the New Lecture Hall (1902), henceforth to be known as A. Lawrence Lowell Hall.

May 7, 1964 – A crowd of some 1,500, including many undergraduates, gathers beneath the sycamores along the Charles chanting, “We shall not be underpassed,” thus protesting plans of the Metropolitan District Commission for a Memorial Drive underpass that would destroy most of the venerable trees and, many fear, seriously compromise the quality of life in Cambridge.

May 6, 1971 – As part of the ongoing antiwar movement, some 4,000 people – including hundreds of Harvard and Radcliffe students, and some Harvard faculty members – try to shut down Boston’s John F. Kennedy Federal Building by staging a mass sit-down on the outside stairs to the building.

May 1973 – Former Boston Celtics star Thomas E. (“Satch”) Sanders succeeds Robert W. Harrison as head Basketball Coach.

May 5, 1986 – Navajo artist R. C. Gorman visits at the invitation of The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, American Indians at Harvard-Radcliffe, and Leverett House.

– From the Harvard Historical Calendar, a database compiled by Marvin Hightower