Black History Month
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192 free Black History Month trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Black History Month trivia questions with answers. Black History Month trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Black History trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Who was the first African American to earn a Harvard PhD?
W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois finished it in 1895, and his dissertation on the suppression of the African slave trade was published the next year as the first volume of the Harvard Historical Studies series.
Q 02Which hymn, written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson, is often called the Black national anthem?
Lift Every Voice and Sing
Lift Every Voice and Sing began as a poem that Johnson, then a school principal in Jacksonville, wrote for 500 of his pupils to perform; his brother Rosamond set it to music.
Q 03In which German city did the Black community begin holding Black History Month events in 1990?
Berlin
Berlin members of the Initiative of Black Germans organised the first one in 1990; it lasted about a week, and the events later spread to Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich.
Q 04In the United Kingdom, Black History Month is celebrated in which month?
October
October falls near the start of the British school year, and the organisers of the first event in 1987 wanted the month to reach Black pupils early in the term.
Q 05Black History Month is in February partly to mark which two figures' birthdays?
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass both had February birthdays that Black communities already celebrated; Douglass, born enslaved, never knew his real date and chose February 14 for himself.
Q 06Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month in 1976 during which national anniversary?
The US Bicentennial
The US Bicentennial year was also the fiftieth anniversary of Negro History Week; Ford urged Americans to honor 'the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans'.
Q 07Black students and educators at which Ohio university held the first Black History Month in 1970?
Kent State University
Kent State University's Black United Students proposed it in 1969 and held the first one from January 2 to February 28, 1970, months before the shootings that made the campus known worldwide.
Q 08Which institution opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington in 2016?
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian was told by Congress to create the museum in 2003; at its 2016 dedication a 99-year-old daughter of a man born into slavery helped President Obama ring the opening bell.
Q 09In Jamaica, Black History Month shares February with which celebration timed to Bob Marley's birthday?
Reggae Month
Reggae Month was declared by Jamaica's government in 2008 and fills February because Bob Marley was born on the 6th and Dennis Brown, the 'Crown Prince of Reggae', on the 1st.
Q 10Which MP, the first Black woman elected to Canada's Parliament, moved the 1995 motion recognizing February as Black History Month?
Jean Augustine
Jean Augustine's motion passed the House of Commons unanimously in December 1995; a Grenada-born former school principal, she had entered Parliament only two years earlier.
Q 11The UK's first Black History Month event in 1987 hosted Maulana Karenga, the creator of which holiday?
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa was created by Karenga in 1966, in the aftermath of the Watts riots in Los Angeles, as a week-long celebration of African American culture modelled on African harvest festivals.
Q 12Which sailor of African and Native American descent is remembered as the first to die in the 1770 Boston Massacre?
Crispus Attucks
Crispus Attucks lay in state at Faneuil Hall before his burial, yet the future president who defended the British soldiers in court blamed his 'mad behavior' for the bloodshed.
Q 13Which three colors make up the Pan-African flag adopted by the UNIA in 1920?
Red, black and green
Q 21Which formerly enslaved writer's 1789 autobiography became a weapon for Britain's abolitionists?
Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano travelled widely to promote his Interesting Narrative, which helped the abolitionist cause and made its author, once sold to a Royal Navy officer, a wealthy man.
Q 22The 'Lost Cause' myth, which played down slavery, recast the Civil War as a war of what?
Northern aggression
Northern aggression was the Lost Cause's charge against the Union, alongside the claim that secession rather than slavery caused the war; the phrase 'War of Northern Aggression' itself was hardly used until the 20th century.
Q 23Which Brooklyn-born artist went from spraying cryptic 'SAMO' graffiti to 1980s art-world stardom?
Red, black and green were chosen for a flag meant to answer a hit song of 1900 that jeered that every race had a flag except Black Americans.
Q 14Which 1977 miniseries, based on Alex Haley's book, traced Kunta Kinte's family from his capture to emancipation?
Roots
Roots was shown on eight consecutive nights because a nervous ABC wanted it over quickly; instead more than half of all Americans watched at least part of it.
Q 15Which Black Canadian businesswoman, now on the $10 bill, refused to leave a whites-only cinema section in 1946?
Viola Desmond
Viola Desmond was convicted of dodging one cent of amusement tax, the difference between the two ticket prices; she was pardoned in 2010, 45 years after her death.
Q 16Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, who founded the UK's Black History Month in 1987, came from which country?
Ghana
Ghana-born Addai-Sebo had coordinated special projects at the GLC, the capital's council under Ken Livingstone; after his 1987 launch other boroughs began adopting the month.
Q 17Which US president issued the 1986 proclamation designating February as 'National Black (Afro-American) History Month'?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan's proclamation answered a request from Congress; he wrote that the month's 'foremost purpose' was to make all Americans aware of the struggle for freedom and equal opportunity.
Q 18Which Canadian city issued the country's first Black History Month proclamation, in 1979?
Toronto
Toronto acted on a petition from founders of the Ontario Black History Society; the province followed with its own proclamation in 1993 and the House of Commons in 1995.
Q 19In what year did Carter G. Woodson establish the Negro History Bulletin?
1937
In 1937, at the urging of Mary McLeod Bethune, Woodson established the Negro History Bulletin, which focused on the annual theme.
Q 20Which Negro leagues pitching legend finally reached the major leagues in 1948 as a 42-year-old rookie?
Satchel Paige
Satchel Paige helped Cleveland win the 1948 World Series, then returned in 1965 to pitch three scoreless innings for Kansas City at the age of 59.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat left home as a teenager and tagged Manhattan walls with a friend, Al Diaz, under the name SAMO; he died of an overdose at 27.
Q 24Which actor and director said 'I don't want a Black history month', calling Black history American history?
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman said it to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes in 2005, then offered a deal: 'I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.'
Q 25The very first Black History Month celebration, in 1970, opened on which date?
January 2
Kent State's first Black History Month opened on January 2, 1970, and ran to February 28, organised by the university's Black United Students.
Q 26Which musician's song 'Happy Birthday' campaigned to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday?
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder's hit helped build support alongside a petition with millions of signatures; the holiday became law in 1983, and he headlined the concert marking its first observance in 1986.
Q 27Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison on which island?
Robben Island
Robben Island held Mandela until 1982; the former prison is now a World Heritage Site, and two more of its inmates went on to become South Africa's president.
Q 28Which 1961 campaign sent Black and white activists through the South on interstate buses to challenge segregation?
The Freedom Rides
The Freedom Rides were met by a mob that burned a bus near Anniston, Alabama; the outcry pushed federal regulators to ban segregation in interstate terminals that November.
Q 29Which West African country grew from a colony set up in the 1820s for freed Black Americans?
Liberia
Liberia named its capital, Monrovia, after US president James Monroe, who backed the project; it declared independence in 1847, yet Washington withheld recognition until 1862.
Q 30Which ship brought hundreds of Caribbean migrants to Britain in 1948 and gave its name to their generation?
Empire Windrush
Empire Windrush began life as a German cruise liner, the Monte Rosa, seized by Britain as a prize of war; in 1948 she docked at Tilbury with more than 800 Caribbean passengers.