Black History & Culture
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This Black trivia quiz covers 98 free questions with answers across Black history and culture: the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Migration, jazz, Motown and the birthplace of hip-hop, inventors like Garrett Morgan and Sarah Boone, athletes from Jesse Owens to Arthur Ashe, and landmark cases from Dred Scott to Brown v. Board of Education. Openers such as who gave the "I Have a Dream" speech sit beside harder ones, like which movement gave "Black is Beautiful" its roots. It is built for Black History Month classrooms, family game nights, church groups and quiz hosts who want a round that goes beyond the same five names. If you came looking for fun Black trivia questions or Black family trivia questions for a reunion, a cookout or a holiday gathering, the mix of easy and hard is designed to work across generations. Every answer has been verified against a primary source or reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation after you answer. Play it through, share your score, and see which questions surprise the people who thought they knew it all.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Alabama city's bus boycott began after a Black woman was arrested for refusing to give up her seat?
Montgomery
Montgomery's boycott ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling that segregated seating on its buses was unconstitutional.
Q 02Which civil rights leader won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. gave away the prize money, sharing it among leading civil rights groups instead of keeping it.
Q 03What genre originated in New Orleans' African American communities around 1900?
Jazz
Jazz star Louis Armstrong learned to play cornet properly in a New Orleans boys' home, where he was sent after an arrest on New Year's Eve 1912.
Q 04Who was the first African American President of the United States?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama lost a 2000 congressional primary to incumbent Bobby Rush by two to one, eight years before he won the presidency.
Q 05Which whites-only Harlem venue had Duke Ellington's orchestra as its house band?
Cotton Club
The Cotton Club's live radio broadcasts carried Duke Ellington's orchestra across the country and made him a national star.
Q 06Before the first American orbital flight, its astronaut asked which NASA mathematician to check the electronic computer's numbers by hand?
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson ran the same equations on a desk calculator, and she recalled Glenn saying that if she said the numbers were good, he was ready to go.
Q 07What name was given to the statutes that enforced racial segregation across the American South after Reconstruction?
Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896, when the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson ruling accepted 'separate but equal' facilities.
Q 08Which African American athlete broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, and every April 15 all MLB players now wear his number 42 on Jackie Robinson Day.
Q 09Which landmark Supreme Court case ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional?
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous, yet a year later Brown II ordered desegregation only 'with all deliberate speed', and many Southern leaders resisted.
Q 10Which author wrote the novel "Beloved" (1987), a story about the haunting legacy of slavery?
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison drew on Margaret Garner, who fled slavery to Cincinnati in 1856 and killed her daughter as the family was being recaptured.
Q 11What does the holiday Juneteenth commemorate?
Emancipation being enforced in Texas in 1865
Emancipation being enforced in Texas in 1865 came through General Gordon Granger's order, about two and a half years after the Proclamation took effect.
Q 12Which city is considered the birthplace of hip-hop music?
New York City
Hip-hop originated in the Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s. DJ Kool Herc is widely credited with pioneering the genre at a back-to-school party in 1973.
Q 13Garrett Morgan patented an early version of which roadway device in 1923?
Traffic signal
Q 21Which 1977 miniseries based on Alex Haley's novel became one of the most-watched broadcasts in US history?
Roots
Roots aired on ABC over eight consecutive nights in January 1977. Its final episode drew 100 million viewers, and an estimated 130 to 140 million watched the miniseries overall — more than half the U.S. population at the time.
Q 22What is the 1921 destruction of 'Black Wall Street' by white mobs called?
Tulsa Race Massacre
The Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed Greenwood, yet Black Tulsans rebuilt it despite city efforts to force them out.
Q 23Who was the first African American woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress?
Halle Berry
Garrett Morgan sold his traffic signal patent to General Electric, and in 1916 his smoke hood let him rescue men trapped in a tunnel beneath Lake Erie.
Q 14Which African American poet wrote "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"?
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou's 1969 memoir has repeatedly been among the books most challenged in US schools and libraries, over its sexual content and racism.
Q 15Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded their radical party in 1966 in which California city?
Oakland
Oakland was where the party first drew attention, as members openly carried guns on patrols to monitor the police.
Q 16Which soul singer is known as the "Queen of Soul"?
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin turned Otis Redding's 'Respect', a husband demanding respect at home, into a 1967 hit later embraced as a feminist anthem.
Q 17What was the Underground Railroad?
A network of secret routes and safe houses for escapees
A network of secret routes and safe houses for escapees operated in defiance of federal fugitive slave laws, and many who used it fled as far as Canada.
Q 18Turned away by Maryland's segregated law school, Thurgood Marshall studied law at which historically Black university?
Howard University
Howard University is where Charles Hamilton Houston mentored Marshall, insisting students be 'social engineers rather than lawyers'.
Q 19What traditional African American dish, made from pig intestines, is considered a soul food staple?
Chitlins
Chitlins, or chitterlings, must be washed rigorously, which also tames their natural odor, yet the smell of them cooking remains notorious.
Q 20Which Alabama institute scientist developed hundreds of uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes?
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver designed a mobile classroom, the Jesup wagon, to take his farming lessons out to the farmers themselves.
Halle Berry won for Monster's Ball and dedicated the moment to every nameless, faceless woman of color who now had a chance.
Q 24Which Harlem Renaissance poet wrote the poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"?
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes launched his literary career when The Crisis published the poem in 1921.
Q 25Which African American sprinter won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens got a ticker-tape parade in New York, yet had to ride a freight elevator to his own reception at the Waldorf hotel.
Q 26What seven-day celebration of African heritage did Maulana Karenga create in 1966?
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966 and is based on seven principles (Nguzo Saba) including unity, self-determination, and creativity.
Q 27Which abolitionist, born into slavery in Maryland, published a bestselling 1845 Narrative of his life?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass then spent almost two years speaking in Britain and Ireland to avoid recapture, and supporters there bought his freedom.
Q 28Which African American surgeon improved blood plasma storage and organized the first large-scale blood bank?
Charles Drew
Charles Drew's blood bank program at first excluded Black donors, so its leading expert was ineligible to take part, and he protested the policy.
Q 29Which 2018 Marvel Studios film was the studio's first directed by an African American filmmaker?
Black Panther
Black Panther's star Chadwick Boseman died in 2020, and Marvel said the sequel would not use a digital double of him.
Q 30What was the Great Migration?
Black Americans leaving the rural South for northern cities
Black Americans leaving the rural South for northern cities numbered about six million from 1910 to 1970, escaping racial violence and seeking work.