Q 01/05

Henry David Thoreau was jailed in 1846 for refusing to pay which tax, in protest at slavery?

A) Property tax

B) Poll tax

C) Tea tax

D) Church tax

Answer · why

B) Poll tax

Poll tax had gone unpaid by Thoreau for six years when the local collector, Sam Staples, stopped him and asked for it; he refused once more and was lo...

Q 02/05

Gandhi's 1930 march to the sea at Dandi defied a British monopoly on which everyday commodity?

A) Tea

B) Cotton

C) Salt

D) Sugar

Answer · why

C) Salt

Salt could legally be made and sold only by the British, so Gandhi walked 240 miles in 24 days and then broke the law by making his own at the shore.

Q 03/05

Whose 1955 arrest for refusing to give up a bus seat sparked a year-long boycott in Alabama?

A) Rosa Parks

B) Ella Baker

C) Fannie Lou Hamer

D) Coretta Scott King

Answer · why

A) Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was secretary of the local NAACP chapter, not simply a tired seamstress, and the boycott her arrest set off ended with bus segregation rule...

Q 04/05

Thoreau was living in a cabin he had built beside which body of water when he was arrested in 1846?

A) Merrimack River

B) Cape Cod Bay

C) Lake Champlain

D) Walden Pond

Answer · why

D) Walden Pond

Walden Pond was his home for two years, two months and two days, and he was walking into town on an errand when the tax collector stopped him.

Q 05/05

From a jail cell in which Alabama city did Martin Luther King Jr. write his famous 1963 open letter?

A) Birmingham

B) Montgomery

C) Tuscaloosa

D) Mobile

Answer · why

A) Birmingham

Birmingham's jail is where King answered eight white clergymen who had argued that segregation should be fought in the courts, not the streets.