As an architecture student at Yale in the late 1960s, Josh Morton lived in New Haven's Hill neighborhood, half a block from the local chapter headquarters of the Black Panther Party. Looking for a new way to support their cause, Morton volunteered to drive for the Panthers' "Breakfast for Children" program, picking up kids in his van, feeding them pancakes in a local church basement, and driving them to school. After gaining the Panthers' trust through his work, they handed him a 16mm camera and asked him to make films about their community to help them raise money.

In 2016, Morton, a graduate of both Yale College (1967) and the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1972), donated original elements and prints of six films, including the observational documentary Mayday (1970), to the Yale Film Archive.

In the spring of 1970, thousands of protesters descended on New Haven to demonstrate against the trial of members of the Black Panther Party for the murder of suspected FBI informant Alex Rackley. Led by radical luminaries Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Tom Hayden, the demonstrators converged on the New Haven Green to vent their anger and shut Yale down. Yale President Kingman Brewster commissioned a small group of Yale students to document the demonstrations, resulting in this short film, credited collectively to May First Media (which included filmmakers Josh Morton and Nick Doob, and who were advised by Yale filmmaking faculty member Michael Roemer). The film was preserved from original elements, with laboratory work by Fotokem and DJ Audio, and audio restoration by Audio Mechanics.