Black Movie Trivia
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This Black movie trivia quiz has 97 free questions with answers and covers a century of Black cinema: the race films of Oscar Micheaux, the all-Black musicals of the 1940s, Sidney Poitier's barrier-breaking Oscar, the blaxploitation boom of Shaft and Sweet Sweetback, the hood classics of the 1990s, the comedies people still quote (Coming to America, Friday, House Party), and the modern era of Moonlight, Get Out, Black Panther and Sinners. Along the way it asks about the first Black actors to win in each Oscar category, the directors from Spike Lee to Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler, and the small details fans love, like the budget of Get Out or the fictional country of Zamunda. The questions run from easy ones for anyone who watched Bad Boys on cable to hard ones for people who can name the studio that made The Wiz. It works for a movie night, a Black History Month event, or a bar quiz where the film buffs need humbling. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and reference sources, and each question shows an explanation and its citation once you answer.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was the first African American to win an Academy Award, for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind?
Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel was barred from the film's Atlanta premiere by Georgia's segregation laws, and at the Oscars she sat at a segregated table against the far wall.
Q 02Sidney Poitier became the first Black actor to win Best Actor in 1964 for which film?
Lilies of the Field
In Lilies of the Field, Poitier plays Homer Smith, a handyman who stops at a desert farm for water and ends up building a chapel for a group of nuns.
Q 03Halle Berry became the first African American woman to win Best Actress for which 2001 film?
Monster's Ball
In Monster's Ball, Halle Berry plays a death-row widow who falls for the prison guard who helped execute her husband.
Q 04Louis Gossett Jr. became the first African American to win Best Supporting Actor for which 1982 film?
An Officer and a Gentleman
In An Officer and a Gentleman, Gossett's drill instructor Emil Foley hazes Richard Gere's officer candidate to the brink of quitting.
Q 05Denzel Washington's second Oscar came for which 2001 film, in which he plays a corrupt LAPD officer?
Training Day
Training Day won Washington Best Actor the same night Sidney Poitier got an honorary Oscar, and Washington said he had been chasing Sidney for 40 years.
Q 06Glory tells the story of which Civil War regiment?
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry refused all pay rather than accept less than white soldiers, until Congress granted them equal pay.
Q 07Whoopi Goldberg won her Oscar for playing a psychic in which 1990 film?
Ghost
Whoopi Goldberg won for Ghost although director Jerry Zucker first saw her only as a comedian and also auditioned Tina Turner for Oda Mae.
Q 08Which 2016 film was the first LGBTQ-themed feature with an all-Black cast to win Best Picture?
Moonlight
Moonlight was shot in Miami's Liberty Square, the housing project where director Barry Jenkins and writer Tarell Alvin McCraney both grew up.
Q 09In the 2013 film 42, Chadwick Boseman plays which baseball pioneer?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson wore number 42, and in 1997 Major League Baseball retired it across every team in his honor.
Q 1012 Years a Slave is based on the memoir of which man, kidnapped in 1841?
Solomon Northup
Solomon Northup, a free New York fiddler, was lured to Washington with a musician's job, then drugged and sold into slavery.
Q 11In Get Out, what is the surname of Rose's family, whom Chris travels upstate to meet?
Armitage
At the Armitages' party, Rose's father silently auctions off Chris to the guests, using hand signals beside his photo.
Q 12The doppelgängers who terrorise Adelaide's family in Jordan Peele's Us are called what?
The Tethered
The Tethered are doubles abandoned underground after a failed experiment, forced to mimic the lives of the people above.
Q 13Black Panther was the first superhero film to receive a nomination for which Oscar?
Best Picture
Black Panther's Best Picture nod came with an Oscar for production designer Hannah Beachler, whom Ryan Coogler brought from Fruitvale Station and Creed.
Q 21The 1993 film Menace II Society was the directorial debut of which sibling filmmakers?
The Hughes brothers
The Hughes brothers, twins who began in music videos, later took Tupac Shakur to court after he assaulted them on a video shoot.
Q 22In New Jack City, Wesley Snipes plays which crack-era drug lord?
Nino Brown
Nino Brown takes over a Harlem apartment building, the Carter, and turns it into the headquarters of his drug empire.
Q 23In Coming to America, Eddie Murphy plays Akeem, crown prince of which fictional African nation?
Zamunda
Zamunda's Prince Akeem balks at an arranged marriage and goes to Queens, New York, to find a bride who loves him for himself.
Q 14In Black Panther, which former black-ops soldier challenges T'Challa for the throne of Wakanda?
Killmonger
Killmonger wants to end Wakanda's isolation and use its technology to arm oppressed Black people around the world.
Q 15In Ryan Coogler's 2025 horror film Sinners, Michael B. Jordan plays a dual role as what?
Twin brothers
Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who come home with gangland money to open a juke joint that vampires besiege.
Q 16Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing is famous for its soundtrack use of which Public Enemy song?
Fight the Power
Fight the Power exists because Spike Lee wanted a defiant, angry song for the film and thought right away of Public Enemy.
Q 17Which character does Spike Lee play himself in his feature debut, She's Gotta Have It?
Mars Blackmon
Mars Blackmon was Lee's own role because he couldn't afford another actor, and Nike later paired the character with Michael Jordan in ads.
Q 18Spike Lee's 1992 'Malcolm X' was based on an autobiography written with which author?
Alex Haley
Alex Haley built the book from interviews with Malcolm X, who was assassinated before it was published in 1965.
Q 19With Boyz n the Hood, John Singleton became the youngest and first African American nominee for which Oscar?
Best Director
John Singleton earned the Best Director nomination after insisting that only he direct his script: 'I wasn't going to have somebody from Idaho or Encino direct this movie.'
Q 20Boyz n the Hood takes its title from a 1987 song by which rapper?
Eazy-E
Ice Cube wrote the song for a New York group, HBO, who passed on it, so Eazy-E recorded it himself.
Q 24The 1995 comedy Friday, starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, was directed by whom?
F. Gary Gray
F. Gary Gray, who had directed Ice Cube's It Was a Good Day video, made Friday as a lighthearted answer to violent hood films.
Q 25The 1990 comedy House Party starred which hip-hop duo?
Kid 'n Play
Kid 'n Play star in Reginald Hudlin's feature version of House Party, which grew out of his prizewinning Harvard student film.
Q 26Who made her feature directing debut with Love & Basketball, starring Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps?
Gina Prince-Bythewood
Gina Prince-Bythewood drew on her own life, aiming for a black When Harry Met Sally about a girl who dreamed of playing in the NBA.
Q 27Waiting to Exhale, starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett, was the first theatrical film directed by which actor?
Forest Whitaker
In Forest Whitaker's film, Bassett's Bernadine sets her husband's car on fire with his clothes inside after he leaves her for another woman.
Q 28In Set It Off, four friends in Los Angeles turn to what crime?
Bank robbery
The friends turn to bank robbery after Frankie is fired from her teller job for knowing one of the men who robbed her bank.
Q 29Which Lee wrote and directed the 1999 film The Best Man?
Malcolm D. Lee
Malcolm D. Lee reunited the cast 14 years later for the sequel The Best Man Holiday.
Q 30The 2002 film Barbershop, starring Ice Cube, is set on the South Side of which city?
Chicago
On Chicago's South Side, Calvin sells the barbershop his father left him to a loan shark, then spends the day trying to buy it back.