May Ayim (3 May 1960 in Hamburg – 9 August 1996 in Berlin) is the pen name of May Opitz (born Sylvia Andler); she was an Afro-German poet, educator, and activist. The child of a German student and Ghanaian medical student, she was adopted by a white German family when young. After reconnecting with her father and his family in Ghana, in 1992 she took his surname for a pen name. Opitz wrote a thesis at the University of Regensburg, "Afro-Deutsche: Ihre Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte aus dem Hintergrund gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen" (Afro-Germans: Their Cultural and Social History on the Background of Social Change), which was the first scholarly study of Afro-German history. Combined with contemporary materials, it was published as the book Farbe Bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte (1986). This was translated and published in English as Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (1986). It included accounts by many women of Afro-German descent. Ayim worked as an activist to unite Afro-Germans and combat racism in German society. She co-founded Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative of Black People in Germany) to that purpose in the late 1980s. Early life Born Sylvia Andler in 1960 in Hamburg, Germany, she was the daughter of unmarried parents Ursula Andler and Emmanuel Ayim. Her father, a Ghanaian medical student, wanted to have her raised by his childless sister, but German law made 'illegitimate' children a ward of the state and did not give rights to biological fathers. Her mother placed the girl for adoption. After a brief time in a children's home, Andler was adopted by the Opitz family, who named her May Opitz and raised her with their biological children. She grew up in Westphalia, where she later said that her childhood was unhappy. She considered her adoptive parents to be strict and spoke about how they used physical violence against her. This was one of the issues she explored in her later poetry. She later said that the family threw her out of the family home at the age of 19, which the Opitz family denied. She continued to keep in touch with them. That same year she graduated from Friedenschule, the Episcopal School in Münster, and passed her Abitur. She attended teacher training college in Münster, specialising in German language and Social Studies. Opitz attended the University of Regensburg, majoring in Psychology and Education. During this period she