Q 01/05

Who delivered the 'I Have a Dream' speech in August 1963?

A) Malcolm X

B) Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

C) Jesse Jackson

D) Martin Luther King Jr.

Answer · why

D) Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. began by reading from his typescript, then set it aside: the 'dream' passage was improvised, built on a refrain he had used in ...

Q 02/05

Who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, sparking a major boycott?

A) Rosa Parks

B) Coretta Scott King

C) Fannie Lou Hamer

D) Dorothy Height

Answer · why

A) Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955; the boycott that followed lasted more than a year and ended only when the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery's...

Q 03/05

Which state did Barack Obama represent in the US Senate before becoming the first African American president?

A) Illinois

B) Hawaii

C) New York

D) Massachusetts

Answer · why

A) Illinois

Illinois: Obama lost a 2000 primary there for a seat in the US House, then won election to the US Senate from the state four years later.

Q 04/05

What was the racial segregation system enforced by statute in the American South called?

A) Jim Crow laws

B) Black Codes

C) Reconstruction Acts

D) Fugitive Slave Laws

Answer · why

A) Jim Crow laws

Jim Crow laws probably took their name from 'Jump Jim Crow', a song-and-dance routine that the white performer Thomas D. Rice made famous in blackface...

Q 05/05

Which abolitionist's 1845 Narrative was followed by My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855, the second of his three autobiographies?

A) Frederick Douglass

B) Booker T. Washington

C) W.E.B. Du Bois

D) Solomon Northup

Answer · why

A) Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass, whose Narrative was a bestseller that exposed him as a fugitive, so he left for Britain until supporters bought his freedom. Life ...