98 Fun Facts About DEI Trivia: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

What is the 1964 US law outlawing discrimination by race, colour, religion, sex and national origin called?

The Civil Rights Act: in 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that its ban on sex discrimination at work also covers firing someone for sexual orientation or gender identity.

Televised beatings of marchers in which Alabama city helped push the Voting Rights Act through Congress?

Selma: on 'Bloody Sunday' in 1965, state troopers attacked marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the national outcry hastened the bill's passage.

Which 1896 Supreme Court case established 'separate but equal'?

Plessy v. Ferguson: in 1892 Homer Plessy deliberately sat in a whites-only train car in New Orleans to test Louisiana's segregation law, and was arrested.

In 1967, which ban did the Supreme Court strike down in the Loving case?

Interracial marriage: the Lovings had been sentenced to a year in prison, suspended if they left Virginia for 25 years, so they moved to Washington, D.C.

Which US president signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law?

George H. W. Bush: signing it in 1990, he declared, 'Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.'

Which tennis star beat Bobby Riggs in 1973's 'Battle of the Sexes' match?

Billie Jean King, then 29, beat him while campaigning for equal prize money for women, and she also helped found the Women's Tennis Association.

Title IX, the 1972 law against sex discrimination in education, became best known for opening up what to girls?

Sports: the law never mentions them, but it covers any federally funded education program, and athletics count as one.

The 1969 uprising seen as the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement broke out at which New York bar?

The Stonewall Inn riots marked a new beginning for gay rights in the United States; the first Pride marches, a year later, marked their anniversary.

Juneteenth, made a US federal holiday in 2021, commemorates the end of what?

Juneteenth marks 19 June 1865, when Union troops in Galveston, Texas, announced the end of slavery there, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Who was the first woman to serve as a US Supreme Court justice?

Sandra Day O'Connor joined the Court in 1981, about three decades after law firms had turned the Stanford Law graduate away because she was a woman.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first woman of which faith on the Supreme Court?

Jewish: before joining the Court in 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had argued six sex-discrimination cases before it as an ACLU lawyer and won five.

Who was the first African American justice on the US Supreme Court, appointed in 1967?

Thurgood Marshall, who as NAACP counsel had argued and won Brown v. Board of Education, was appointed by President Johnson in 1967 and served until 1991.

Which Bronx-raised future Supreme Court justice helped end baseball's 1994-95 strike with an injunction?

Sonia Sotomayor, then a district judge, ruled against the team owners, and when Obama nominated her in 2009 he said 'some say that Judge Sotomayor saved baseball.'

Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's colour line on April 15, 1947, starting at first base for which team?

The Brooklyn Dodgers started Robinson at first base that day; his number 42 is now retired across all of baseball.

Sally Ride made history in 1983 by becoming the first American woman to do what?

Fly in space: both of her missions flew aboard the shuttle Challenger, and after it exploded in 1986 she served on the commission investigating the disaster.

In 2021 Kamala Harris became the first woman, first African American and first Asian American to hold which office?

Vice President: when Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 race, Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, but she lost to Donald Trump.

Barack Obama signed the 2010 repeal of which policy that kept gay troops from serving openly?

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993, it let gay troops serve only if they hid it, and thousands were discharged before its repeal took effect in 2011.

Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician celebrated in the film Hidden Figures, calculated what for Project Mercury?

Spaceflight trajectories: she worked out Alan Shepard's in 1961, and before orbiting Earth John Glenn insisted she check the computer's numbers by hand.

Rosa Parks sparked the 1955 Montgomery boycott by refusing to do what?

Give up her bus seat: Parks refused in December 1955, nine months after 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested for the same act in Montgomery.

In which city was Harvey Milk, an early openly gay US official, elected in 1977?

Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in November 1977 and was assassinated at City Hall in November 1978.

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta co-founded a union to fight for the rights of which group?

Farm workers: their union joined the 1965 Delano grape strike, and a nationwide boycott of grapes finally won union contracts from growers in 1970.

Labor activist Dolores Huerta is credited with coining which rallying cry?

Sí se puede: Huerta is credited with coining it, and when Obama gave her the Medal of Freedom he joked that he had stolen her slogan.

Judith Heumann, 'Mother of the Disability Rights Movement', helped lead which 1977 protest?

504 Sit-in: protesters held a federal building for weeks until the Section 504 rules were signed, and the Black Panther Party brought them hot meals.

New York activist Marsha P. Johnson was a leading early advocate for which group in particular?

Transgender individuals: in 1970 she and Sylvia Rivera founded STAR, whose first shelter for homeless trans youth was an unused trailer truck.

Malala Yousafzai became the youngest ever recipient of which honour in 2014?

The Nobel Peace Prize: Malala won it at 17, two years after a Taliban gunman shot her on her school bus for campaigning for girls' education.

Who coined the concept of 'intersectionality' in 1989?

Kimberlé Crenshaw coined it in a 1989 paper on cases like one where a court wouldn't let Black women sue General Motors as both Black and female.

Psychiatrist Chester Pierce, who coined 'microaggression' in 1970, advised which children's TV show?

Sesame Street: Mississippi's public TV commission voted to keep it off the air over its integrated cast, then reversed after the vote made national news.

Which president desegregated the US armed forces by executive order in 1948?

Harry Truman: the military resisted his 1948 order, and almost all of the armed forces were integrated only by the end of the Korean War.

Who became the first Black woman elected to the US Congress, in 1968?

Shirley Chisholm won New York's 12th district in November 1968, becoming the first Black woman in Congress; in 1972 she sought the Democratic presidential nomination.

Which US president first officially recognised Black History Month, in 1976?

Gerald Ford: it grew from Carter G. Woodson's 1926 Negro History Week, set in February when Black communities already marked Lincoln's and Frederick Douglass's birthdays.

Women's History Month is observed in the United States during which month?

March: it grew from a 1978 women's history week in Sonoma County, California, and Congress made March Women's History Month in 1987.

Which 2015 Supreme Court case made same-sex marriage legal across the United States?

Obergefell v. Hodges: Jim Obergefell sued because Ohio wouldn't let him be listed as surviving spouse on his husband John Arthur's death certificate.

Hispanic Heritage Month starts on 15 September, the eve of which country's independence day?

Mexico: its independence day is 16 September, not Cinco de Mayo, which marks the Mexican army's 1862 victory at the Battle of Puebla.

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is celebrated in which month?

May: it marks the first Japanese immigrant's arrival on 7 May 1843 and the transcontinental railroad, built with major help from Chinese workers, finished on 10 May 1869.

Native American Heritage Month is observed in the United States in which month?

November: Red Fox James rode on horseback from state to state, seeking 24 state governments' backing for a day honoring American Indians.

Which university's 1988 'Deaf President Now' protest won it its first deaf president?

Gallaudet University students shut the Washington, DC, campus for a week in March 1988 until I. King Jordan was named its first deaf president.

Which country was the first to give women the vote in national elections, in 1893?

New Zealand: Kate Sheppard's campaign sent Parliament huge petitions in 1891, 1892 and 1893, and her portrait now appears on the country's $10 note.

Helen Keller became the first deafblind person in the US to do what?

Earn a college degree: she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1904, having first learned words from Anne Sullivan spelling them into her palm.

The NFL's 'Rooney Rule', adopted in 2003, requires teams to do what?

Interview minority candidates for top jobs: it began with head coaching vacancies in 2003 and has since grown to cover general manager and coordinator jobs.

Though Britain and America share English, American Sign Language is most closely related to which country's sign language?

France: deaf teacher Laurent Clerc brought French signing to America's first school for the deaf in 1817, where it mixed with local signs to form ASL.

Frederick Douglass, a leading 19th-century abolitionist, first gained fame through his skill at what?

Public speaking: an unplanned talk at an 1841 abolitionist convention in Nantucket so moved the audience that he was hired to lecture.

Which president's 1961 executive order first told government contractors to take 'affirmative action'?

John F. Kennedy: Lyndon B. Johnson brought in Hobart Taylor Jr., a Black lawyer, to help shape the order.

In which 1978 Supreme Court case did diversity first become a constitutional-law factor in admissions?

In Regents of UC v. Bakke (1978) the Court struck down racial quotas but Justice Powell's opinion let race count as a 'plus factor' in pursuit of a diverse class.

Which 2023 Supreme Court case rejected race-based affirmative action at colleges?

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ended race-conscious admissions, yet the Court said colleges may still consider an applicant's discussion of how race affected their life.

In the United Kingdom, which three-letter abbreviation is commonly used instead of DEI?

EDI: British bodies say 'equality', the word in the Equality Act 2010, which replaced Britain's separate anti-discrimination laws with a single act.

In the acronym DEIB, what does the B added to diversity, equity and inclusion stand for?

Belonging: psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary called the need to belong a fundamental human motivation, and linked its lack to harm to health and well-being.

At the age of 15, which inventor adapted a code said to be meant for soldiers reading in the dark?

Louis Braille, blinded as a small boy by an accident with his father's awl, simplified Charles Barbier's 12-dot night writing into the six-dot system blind people still read.

Which 1920 constitutional amendment barred denying American women the vote?

Nineteenth Amendment: a women's suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878, but it wasn't ratified until Tennessee approved it in August 1920.

Besides dogs, which animal do Americans with Disabilities Act rules accept as a trained service animal?

Miniature horses get a separate provision in the federal rules, which otherwise exclude every species except domestic dogs from the definition of a service animal.

Which Crayola crayon was renamed Peach in the 1960s as America confronted racial segregation?

Flesh became Peach in the early 1960s, and the company said the change was partly a response to the civil rights movement.

Which children's TV host cooled his feet in a wading pool with a Black policeman character in 1969?

Fred Rogers lent Officer Clemmons his towel, then dried his own feet with it, at a time when racially integrated swimming pools were still controversial.

Which wealthy European democracy did not let women vote in national elections until a 1971 referendum?

Switzerland's men voted the change through in February 1971, and one canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, held out in local votes until a court forced its hand in 1990.

Which country lifted the world's only legal ban on women driving cars in June 2018?

Saudi Arabia ended the ban on 24 June 2018, yet several of the women who had campaigned for the right to drive were detained weeks earlier and stayed under arrest.

In 1967 Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run which race as an officially registered competitor?

The Boston Marathon's race manager Jock Semple tried to grab her bib number mid-race, and women were not officially accepted until 1972, when he presented her trophy.

Which composer had to be turned to see the audience applaud his Ninth Symphony?

Beethoven, by then almost completely deaf, was beating time for an orchestra he could not hear at the 1824 premiere, so the musicians had been told to follow the theatre's own conductor.

Which Baptist minister's birthday became a US federal holiday, first observed in January 1986?

Martin Luther King Jr. got his holiday after Stevie Wonder released the single Happy Birthday to rally support, and Ronald Reagan signed it into law in 1983.

Which Native American language did US Marines use for a battlefield code in the Pacific during World War II?

Navajo had no word for submarine, so the code talkers called it an iron fish; the idea came from Philip Johnston, a missionary's son raised on the reservation.

Which former prisoner of Robben Island became South Africa's first Black head of state in 1994?

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years behind bars, and on Robben Island the inmates ran an informal university where prisoners lectured each other on their own subjects.

Which 1954 Supreme Court ruling, brought for a Topeka third grader, outlawed segregated public schools?

Brown v. Board of Education was decided 9–0. Linda Brown had to ride a bus to a Black school a mile away although a white school stood seven blocks from her home.

Which Underground Railroad conductor, nicknamed Moses, led about 13 rescue missions without losing anyone?

Harriet Tubman later guided the Combahee Ferry raid, which freed more than 700 people, and is widely credited as the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States.

Which six-year-old integrated a whites-only New Orleans school in 1960 and inspired a Norman Rockwell painting?

Ruby Bridges was one of six Black children in the city to pass the entrance test, and Rockwell's 1964 painting of her walk is titled The Problem We All Live With.

Which Black American sprinter won four gold medals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Jesse Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and sprint relay, and ESPN later credited him with single-handedly crushing the myth of Aryan supremacy.

Which Gone with the Wind actress became the first African American to win an Academy Award?

Hattie McDaniel won for playing Mammy, yet at the Los Angeles ceremony she had to sit at a segregated table at the side of the room.

Which Hindu festival of lights, lasting five or six days, also has versions observed by Jains and Sikhs?

Diwali has a Sikh counterpart, Bandi Chhor Divas, marking Guru Hargobind's release from a Mughal prison, while Jains honour the final liberation of Mahavira.

During which ninth month of the Islamic calendar do observant Muslims fast from dawn to sunset?

Ramadan days are framed by two meals: suhur, eaten before dawn, and iftar, the nightly feast that breaks the fast.

Which wartime codebreaker, prosecuted in 1952 for a relationship with a man, was put on Britain's £50 note in 2021?

Alan Turing received a royal pardon in 2013, and a 2017 law nicknamed after him pardoned other men convicted under the same abolished offences.

Which European country became the first in the world to let two men or two women legally marry, in 2001?

The Netherlands held its first four such weddings on the day the law took effect, conducted by Amsterdam's mayor Job Cohen, who became a registrar for the occasion.

Which event for disabled athletes grew out of a 1948 contest for injured veterans at Stoke Mandeville Hospital?

The Paralympic Games trace back to Ludwig Guttmann, a doctor who had fled Nazi Germany; his contest turned international in 1952 when Dutch veterans came to compete.

Which star of Children of a Lesser God became the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award?

Marlee Matlin, deaf since she was 18 months old, won Best Actress for what was her very first film role.

Which two-word metaphor did Marilyn Loden coin in 1978 for the invisible barrier to women's promotion?

Glass ceiling went mainstream in 1986, when a widely cited Wall Street Journal article put the phrase in its headline.

Which eight-night holiday marks the Maccabees' recapture of Jerusalem in the 2nd century BCE?

Hanukkah is counted on a nine-branched menorah: eight lights, one more lit each night, plus a helper candle called the shamash that is used to kindle the others.

Which language tops lists of native speakers with nearly one billion, well ahead of Spanish and English?

Mandarin is really a group of varieties, most of them spoken north of the Yangtze River, which is why it is sometimes called Northern Chinese.

Which organisation adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, three years after its founding?

The United Nations approved the text on 10 December 1948, drafted by a committee that Eleanor Roosevelt chaired, and the declaration now exists in more than 500 translations.

In which Arkansas city did Governor Orval Faubus try to stop nine Black students entering Central High in 1957?

Little Rock's nine were picked by the NAACP for their excellent grades and attendance, and President Eisenhower took control of the state's National Guard to protect them.

Which Afrikaans word named the system of racial segregation enforced by law in South Africa from 1948?

Apartheid literally means apart-ness, formed with the Afrikaans suffix -heid, and the system it named also covered what is now Namibia.

Which name, probably taken from an 1820s blackface minstrel act, was given to Southern segregation laws?

Jim Crow probably comes from Jump Jim Crow, a song-and-dance act that the white performer Thomas D. Rice first staged in blackface in 1828.

Which Alabama-trained pilots, nicknamed the Red Tails, were the US military's first Black aviators?

The Tuskegee Airmen earned the Red Tails nickname when pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group painted the tails of their P-47 fighter planes red.

Four Black college freshmen refused to leave which chain's whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960?

Woolworth happily sold the four toothpaste at another counter, then refused them coffee and a doughnut at the lunch counter; the building is now a museum.

Which suffragist became the first real woman shown on a circulating US coin, a dollar issued in 1979?

Susan B. Anthony replaced a planned allegorical Liberty, but the public disliked the coin because it was so easily confused with the quarter.

Which poet, who recited at a 1993 presidential inauguration, became the first Black woman on a US quarter?

Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, opened the American Women quarters series in 2022, with George Washington still on the other side.

Which politician became the first woman nominated for US president by a major party?

Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination in 2016; back in 1979 she had become the first woman made a full partner at Arkansas's Rose Law Firm.

Which Nordic country made Vigdís Finnbogadóttir the world's first democratically elected woman president?

Iceland elected Vigdís in 1980 and kept her in office for 16 years; she had already broken ground in 1972 as the first single woman in the country to adopt a child.

Which Asian country made Sirimavo Bandaranaike the world's first woman prime minister in 1960?

Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, elected her a year after her husband's assassination, and her opponents mocked her as the Weeping Widow.

Which daughter of the poet Lord Byron is often considered the first computer programmer?

Ada Lovelace earned the title through her work on Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine; her parents separated a month after she was born, and Byron soon left England for good.

Which framework, born of the disability rights movement, treats autism as a natural human variation, not a disorder?

Neurodiversity builds on the social model of disability, which holds that disability arises partly from barriers in society and not only from the individual.

Which autistic animal scientist, played by Claire Danes in a 2010 film, redesigned livestock handling?

Temple Grandin was one of the first adults to say publicly that she was autistic, and as a high-school student she built a squeeze machine known as the hug box.

Which hair-care entrepreneur does Guinness record as the first self-made woman millionaire in America?

Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, turned to hair care after suffering severe dandruff and baldness herself, then built a business selling to Black women.

Which African country's 2008 election produced the world's first national parliament with a female majority?

Rwanda reserves 24 of the 80 seats in its Chamber of Deputies for women chosen by special electoral colleges, and it first topped the world table for women MPs in 2003.

Which English-speaking country made multiculturalism official policy in 1971, two years before Australia?

Canada's policy was announced in the House of Commons by Pierre Trudeau's government on 8 October 1971, alongside official bilingualism.

Which New York town hosted the first women's rights convention in 1848, launching the Declaration of Sentiments?

Seneca Falls delegates argued over whether to demand the vote at all, until Frederick Douglass, the only African American present, spoke up for keeping it.

Which Montana Republican, elected in 1916, became the first woman to hold federal office in the United States?

Jeannette Rankin returned to Congress in 1940, and a year later she cast the only vote against declaring war on Japan after Pearl Harbor.

Which term for lending discrimination comes from the ink that marked 'risky' areas on 1930s US mortgage maps?

Redlining got its name from sociologist John McKnight in the 1960s, and the Type D districts outlined on the federal maps were often African American neighbourhoods.

Which week-long celebration of African American culture did Maulana Karenga create in 1966?

Kwanzaa takes its name, its creator said, from a Swahili phrase meaning first fruits, and it celebrates seven principles across its seven days.

Which pronoun was Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2019?

They was the dictionary's pick four years after the American Dialect Society chose the same word, yet it has been used for a single person since the 14th century.

Which company's Black caucus, formed after Rochester's 1964 race riot, was the first employee resource group?

Xerox chief Joseph Wilson worked with his Black employees to tackle discrimination inside the firm, and a National Black Employees Caucus followed in 1970.

Which Goodyear supervisor, tipped off by an anonymous note about her pay, gave her name to a 2009 fair pay law?

Lilly Ledbetter had lost at the Supreme Court for suing too late, so the law named after her restarts the 180-day filing clock with every unfair paycheck.

Which form of prejudice did psychiatrist Robert Butler name in 1969, modelling the word on sexism and racism?

Ageism, as Butler defined it, combines negative attitudes to growing old, discrimination against older people, and institutions that keep the stereotypes alive.

Which physicist wrote A Brief History of Time while paralysed by motor neurone disease diagnosed at 21?

Stephen Hawking lived more than 50 years after the diagnosis, and after losing his speech he operated a voice device with a single cheek muscle.