Q 01/05

The 1896 Supreme Court case that established the "separate but equal" doctrine was Plessy v. what?

A) Ferguson

B) Sandford

C) Topeka

D) Virginia

Answer · why

A) Ferguson

Homer Plessy, one-eighth Black, had deliberately boarded a whites-only Louisiana rail car; only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented.

Q 02/05

Which justice cast the lone dissent in Plessy, writing "Our Constitution is color-blind"?

A) Oliver Wendell Holmes

B) John Marshall Harlan

C) Henry Billings Brown

D) Melville Fuller

Answer · why

B) John Marshall Harlan

His grandson and namesake sat on the Warren Court that heard Brown v. Board six decades later.

Q 03/05

In what year did Brown v. Board of Education rule segregated public schools unconstitutional?

A) 1948

B) 1957

C) 1954

D) 1960

Answer · why

C) 1954

The decision under Chief Justice Earl Warren was unanimous; a follow-up ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed".

Q 04/05

Which president desegregated the US armed forces by executive order in 1948?

A) Franklin D. Roosevelt

B) Dwight Eisenhower

C) John F. Kennedy

D) Harry Truman

Answer · why

D) Harry Truman

Executive Order 9981 came a year after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's colour line.

Q 05/05

How old was Emmett Till when he was murdered in Mississippi in August 1955?

A) 14

B) 15

C) 16

D) 17

Answer · why

A) 14

His mother's decision to hold an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and Jet magazine's photographs, galvanised a generation of activists.