Martin Luther King Jr. Trivia for Kids
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
50 free Martin Luther King Jr. Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Martin Luther King Jr. trivia for kids quiz is written for children aged roughly eight to twelve, and for the teachers and parents running a classroom game around MLK Day. The questions cover his life in a way kids can follow: where he was born, the name he was given at birth, the grade he skipped, the college he went to at fifteen, who he married and how many children they had, and the job he did as a minister. It also covers the big moments of the civil rights movement he led: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington and the 'I Have a Dream' speech, the Letter from Birmingham Jail, the Selma marches, the Nobel Peace Prize, and how his birthday became a national holiday and a day of service. His death is mentioned only briefly and without detail. For older students there is a full Martin Luther King Jr. trivia quiz on BrainPickle with harder questions. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Dr. King, his speeches and the holiday, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Martin Luther King Jr. born?
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia. He was born at home in his grandparents' house, where his parents had moved in after their wedding, and the family stayed until his grandmother died when he was 12.
Q 02What was Martin Luther King Jr.'s first name when he was born?
Michael
Michael. His father, also born Michael, began using the name Martin Luther for them both while the boy was still small, but the birth certificate wasn't corrected until 1957, when he was 28.
Q 03What was the name of Martin's older sister, who later wrote the picture book My Brother Martin?
Christine
Christine. She and Martin graduated from college on the very same day in 1948, and she went on to teach college students for 56 years.
Q 04Martin started college at just 15 without ever attending which grade of school?
Twelfth grade
Twelfth grade. With so many young men away at war, a local college opened its entrance exam to high school juniors, and Martin passed it at the end of eleventh grade.
Q 05At 13, Martin became the youngest assistant manager of a delivery station for what?
A newspaper
A newspaper. He had been a paperboy since he was about eight, so by 13 he was already an old hand at the job.
Q 06Where did Martin study after high school, following his father and grandfather?
Morehouse College
Morehouse College. He was only 15 when he started, and its president, Benjamin Mays, became the mentor who showed him that a minister could also fight for change.
Q 07When Martin's home was bombed in 1956, what did he tell the angry crowd that gathered outside to do?
Stay calm and peaceful
Stay calm and peaceful. His wife and baby daughter had been inside but were unhurt, and he told the crowd to 'be calm as I and my family are' instead of striking back.
Q 08In which city did Martin Luther King Jr. study for his doctorate?
Boston
Boston. The doctorate he finished there in 1955 is the reason he is called Dr. King, and it was in the same city that he met the woman he would marry.
Q 09Who did Martin Luther King Jr. marry?
Coretta Scott
Coretta Scott. A friend gave him her phone number, and at first she was wary of dating a preacher, but they were married the following year.
Q 10What was Martin's future wife studying when the two first met?
Music
Music. She was training as a singer, and later put on 'Freedom Concerts' of songs, poems and stories that raised money for the movement.
Q 11Martin dreamed his four children would be judged by their what?
Character
Character. He said 'the content of their character', and he had tried out the 'dream' refrain on a crowd in Detroit two months earlier before reaching for it again on the spur of the moment.
Q 12Martin became a pastor at just 25 at which Alabama church?
Dexter Avenue Baptist
Dexter Avenue Baptist. He told his new congregation he had 'no pretense to being a great preacher', yet the next year he was leading the city's bus boycott.
Q 13Which woman was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, starting a famous boycott?
Rosa Parks
Q 21Which magazine named Martin its 'Man of the Year' for 1963?
Time
Time. It made the choice at the close of 1963, the year his 'I Have a Dream' speech cemented his fame at home and abroad.
Q 22From which city's jail did Martin Luther King Jr. write a famous open letter in 1963?
Birmingham
Birmingham. He had no writing paper at first, so he began on whatever scraps he could get, and his lawyers carried the pieces out to be put together like a jigsaw.
Q 23The 1965 voting rights marches from Selma ended in which Alabama city?
Montgomery
Montgomery. The 54-mile walk took five days and ended at the state capitol with a crowd of 25,000; less than five months later the Voting Rights Act became law.
Rosa Parks. She later wrote that she was no more tired than usual after work that evening: 'the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.'
Q 14What job did the woman whose arrest started the bus boycott do?
Seamstress
Seamstress. She altered clothes at a department store, and was riding home after a long day's work when the driver ordered her to give up her seat.
Q 15The bus boycott Martin led was planned to last one day, so how long did it actually go on?
Over a year
Over a year. People walked to work or shared rides in some 300 carpool cars through all four seasons, until the Supreme Court ruled that segregated buses broke the law.
Q 16In 1959 Martin spent about a month in which country, where he said he came 'as a pilgrim'?
India
India. He went to meet the family and followers of Mahatma Gandhi, whose peaceful campaigns against British rule he called 'the guiding light' of his own movement.
Q 17Where did Martin Luther King Jr. give his 'I Have a Dream' speech?
The steps of the Lincoln Memorial
The steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Early in the speech his words 'Five score years ago' echoed Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and he said the crowd stood in that president's 'symbolic shadow'.
Q 18The 'I Have a Dream' speech was the high point of which 1963 protest?
March on Washington
The March on Washington. Its full title added 'for Jobs and Freedom', and it is credited with helping to win the Civil Rights Act the following year.
Q 19Which singer is said to have shouted 'Tell them about the dream!' during Martin's famous 1963 speech?
Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson. The 'Queen of Gospel' had sung to the crowd just before he spoke, and five years later she sang 'Precious Lord' at his funeral, as he had asked.
Q 20What did Martin do with his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize money?
Gave it to the movement
Gave it to the movement. He promised that 'every penny' of the $54,000 would go to the struggle, and he shared it among several civil rights groups, not only the one he led.
Q 24The Selma marchers crossed a bridge named after which man?
Edmund Pettus
Edmund Pettus. He was a Confederate general and reputedly a Ku Klux Klan leader in Alabama, so marchers for Black voting rights crossed a bridge honouring a man who had fought against them.
Q 25Which protest was Martin planning in 1968, to bring thousands of every race to the capital?
The Poor People's Campaign
The Poor People's Campaign. It went ahead weeks after his death, and for six weeks a town of tents and shacks called Resurrection City stood on the National Mall.
Q 26Whom did Martin Luther King Jr. travel to Memphis to support in 1968?
Sanitation workers
Sanitation workers. They had walked out after two of them were crushed to death by a faulty garbage truck, and they marched with signs that read 'I Am a Man'.
Q 27The motel where Martin was killed, aged 39, is now what?
A museum
A museum. When its owner went bankrupt, a local foundation bought the motel at auction to save it, and in 1991 it reopened as the National Civil Rights Museum, where visitors can still see his room.
Q 28Which president signed the law that created Martin Luther King Jr. Day?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan. The first bill for the holiday was filed just four days after Martin's death, but it took 15 years and a lost vote in Congress before one reached a president's desk.
Q 29On which day is Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrated?
The third Monday of January
The third Monday of January. That keeps it near his birthday, January 15, while always making a long weekend, so the holiday lands on his real birthday only in some years.
Q 30Which musician wrote the song 'Happy Birthday' to help make Martin's birthday a national holiday?
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder. He also paid for a campaign office in Washington, which helped gather more than six million signatures asking Congress for the holiday.