Q 01/05

Who was the first African American to earn a Harvard PhD?

A) Alain Locke

B) W.E.B. Du Bois

C) Booker T. Washington

D) Kelly Miller

Answer · why

B) 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...

Q 02/05

Which hymn, written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson, is often called the Black national anthem?

A) We Shall Overcome

B) Lift Every Voice and Sing

C) Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

D) Go Down, Moses

Answer · why

B) 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 R...

Q 03/05

In which German city did the Black community begin holding Black History Month events in 1990?

A) Hamburg

B) Berlin

C) Frankfurt

D) Munich

Answer · why

B) 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, Fra...

Q 04/05

In the United Kingdom, Black History Month is celebrated in which month?

A) February

B) October

C) August

D) April

Answer · why

B) 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...

Q 05/05

Black History Month is in February partly to mark which two figures' birthdays?

A) Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass

B) Booker T. Washington and Benjamin Banneker

C) W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey

D) Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth

Answer · why

A) 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 ...