Coretta Scott King
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50 free Coretta Scott King trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Coretta Scott King is often remembered only as the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., but her own story is full of surprises. She trained as a classical singer, stood up to segregation long before she met her husband, and kept working for civil rights, peace and equality for nearly four decades after his death. This quiz collects the fun facts people most often look for: her childhood on a family farm, her college years, an unusual wedding day, famous friends and unexpected acts of kindness, the causes she championed, and the honors and holiday that carry her family's name. It suits students working on a Black History Month or Women's History Month project, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone curious about the woman behind the movement. Every answer comes with a brief explanation, so each question teaches something new.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill when which future Oscar-winning actress was born in the Atlanta area in 1967?
Julia Roberts
Julia Roberts was born to parents who ran an integrated Atlanta acting school that the King children attended. Mrs. King settled the bill because the family was struggling for money.
Q 02Which future Emmy-winning actor did Coretta Scott King babysit during her student years in a small Ohio town?
John Lithgow
John Lithgow spent his childhood in Yellow Springs, where the future Mrs. King was training to be a music teacher. She looked after him years before either of them was famous.
Q 03Where did Coretta Scott King and her new husband spend their 1953 wedding night, as no nearby hotel took Black guests?
A funeral home
A funeral home took in the newlyweds because no hotel near her hometown would rent a room to a Black couple. They had just married on the lawn of her parents' house.
Q 04Which senator was silenced in 2017 for reading aloud a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King opposing a judicial nominee?
Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren was barred from the rest of the debate, so she finished reading the letter on a live stream outside the chamber. It had argued against making Jeff Sessions a federal judge.
Q 05Which television host gave Coretta Scott King a new Atlanta condominium after an intruder broke into her longtime home?
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey made the gift years after a man who later admitted killing women got into the old house at night and found Mrs. King sitting in bed.
Q 06In 1969 Coretta Scott King became the first woman to preach at a regular service in which London landmark?
St. Paul's Cathedral
St. Paul's Cathedral had never before heard a woman give the sermon at one of its appointed services. Mrs. King made the trip with her sister and her sister-in-law.
Q 07Coretta Scott King asked which entertainer to take her late husband's place leading the civil rights movement?
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker thought the offer over and declined, saying her twelve adopted children were too young to lose their mother.
Q 08Which Motown star backed Coretta Scott King's campaign for a holiday honoring her husband with a 1980 tribute song?
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder released the single Happy Birthday to rally support, and six million people signed a petition to Congress. The holiday became law three years later.
Q 09Super Bowl XL in 2006 began with a moment of silence for Coretta Scott King and which other civil rights figure?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks had died the previous October in Detroit, the city hosting the game, and Mrs. King only six days before kickoff.
Q 10Coretta Scott King was born on a family farm in 1927 in which Southern state, where she later married?
Alabama
Alabama's Perry County had been home to the Scotts since the Civil War era. She was born in her parents' house, with her great-grandmother, a former slave, acting as midwife.
Q 11Which crop did the young Coretta Scott King pick alongside her siblings to earn money during the Great Depression?
Cotton
Cotton was the cash crop of the Scott family farm, and the children picked it to add to the household income. All of them shared a single bedroom with their parents.
Q 12Which job did Coretta Scott King's mother take on so that local Black teenagers could get to class nine miles away?
Driving the school bus
Driving the school bus was her mother's fix for a trip too far to walk. She hired the vehicle herself and collected every Black student in the community each day.
Q 13Which business owned by Coretta Scott King's father was burned down after he refused to sell it to a white buyer?
Q 21Which presidential candidate phoned a pregnant Coretta Scott King in 1960 to offer help while her husband sat in jail?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy made the call late in the campaign, and his brother then helped win the release. Historians credit the gesture with swinging many Black voters his way.
Q 22Coretta Scott King travelled with her husband in 1957 to celebrate the independence of which West African nation?
Ghana
Ghana's new prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, invited the couple and gave them a private lunch. He and his ministers wore their old prison caps to the ceremony.
Q 23Which country did Coretta Scott King tour with her husband in 1959, singing for audiences along the way?
India
A lumber mill
A lumber mill was one of several ventures run by Obie Scott, who was among the first Black people in his town to own a vehicle. He and his wife also kept a general store.
Q 14Which brass instrument did Coretta Scott King play at Lincoln high school, alongside piano and a place in the chorus?
Trumpet
Trumpet and piano were both in her repertoire by the time she finished school at the top of her class. She had also become the leading soprano of the senior chorus.
Q 15Coretta Scott King followed her older sister to which Ohio college, where she studied music and education?
Antioch
Antioch had admitted her sister Edythe as its first Black student on a fully integrated basis. Coretta followed in 1945 on a partial scholarship.
Q 16At which music school was Coretta Scott King studying voice when she met her future husband in 1952?
New England Conservatory
New England Conservatory took her in 1951 to train as a singer, with a foundation grant to help pay her way. A mutual friend passed her phone number to a young theology student, and they married the following year.
Q 17What surprised Coretta Scott King about her future husband when the two first met in person in 1952?
How short he was
How short he was struck her at once when he turned up after a single phone call. On that first date he told her she had every quality he wanted in a wife.
Q 18Which traditional promise did Coretta Scott King have cut from her 1953 wedding vows, a rare step for the time?
To obey
To obey was a vow she refused to make, so it was dropped from the ceremony, which her father-in-law conducted.
Q 19Coretta Scott King moved in 1954 to which Southern city, where her husband led Dexter Avenue Baptist Church?
Montgomery
Montgomery became home that September, and within fifteen months a mass boycott had made the young couple famous. She sang in the church choir and taught Sunday school.
Q 20What happened to the house of Coretta Scott King in January 1956 while she and her baby daughter were inside?
It was bombed
It was bombed by a device thrown at the front door, which filled the living room with smoke and broken glass. Nobody was hurt, and she refused both fathers' pleas to leave town with the baby.
India kept the couple busy with invitations to hundreds of engagements. She said later that she was struck by how large a part women played in the country's politics.
Q 24Coretta Scott King travelled to which Swiss city in 1962 as a Women Strike for Peace delegate to disarmament talks?
Geneva
Geneva was hosting a seventeen-nation conference on arms control, and she attended on behalf of an American women's group opposed to nuclear testing.
Q 25To which city did Coretta Scott King travel in 1964 to watch her husband receive the Nobel Peace Prize?
Oslo, Norway
Oslo, Norway, held the ceremony that December, with her husband at 35 the youngest winner the peace prize had yet had.
Q 26What name did Coretta Scott King give the fundraising shows of song, poetry and narration she staged in the 1960s?
Freedom Concerts
Freedom Concerts told the story of the movement in music and spoken word, and the ticket money went to her husband's organization, the SCLC.
Q 27Which Black leader met privately with Coretta Scott King in Selma in 1965, weeks before he was assassinated?
Malcolm X
Malcolm X assured her he had not come to make her husband's job harder. He hoped that seeing the alternative would make white Americans readier to listen to a nonviolent leader.
Q 28Which NAACP chairman skipped the 2006 service for Coretta Scott King over the host church's anti-gay stance?
Julian Bond
Julian Bond said he could not imagine her wanting to be in a megachurch whose pastor preached against gay people, after her years of speaking up for their rights.
Q 29In which city did Coretta Scott King lead a march of sanitation workers four days after her husband was killed there?
Memphis
Memphis saw her walk at the head of the march with her children on the day before her husband was buried. He had planned to lead it himself.
Q 30Weeks after her husband's death, Coretta Scott King gave an anti-war speech in New York using notes found where?
In his pockets
In his pockets were notes that included his Ten Commandments on Vietnam, and she built her address to the rally around them. The event fell on her own birthday.