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

Ferguson was John H. Ferguson, the Louisiana judge who first ruled against Homer Plessy, whose arrest a citizens' committee had arranged to test the s...

Q 02/05

Which phrase did Justice John Marshall Harlan use for the Constitution in his lone Plessy dissent?

A) Inherently unequal

B) Color-blind

C) Separate but equal

D) All deliberate speed

Answer · why

B) Color-blind

Color-blind was the word of a former Kentucky slaveholder who had once opposed emancipation; Harlan warned the ruling would prove as pernicious as the...

Q 03/05

Which Chief Justice delivered the unanimous Brown ruling against segregated public schools?

A) Fred Vinson

B) Warren Burger

C) Earl Warren

D) Charles Evans Hughes

Answer · why

C) Earl Warren

Earl Warren, California's governor until months before, worked to make the ruling unanimous, believing a divided court would feed Southern resistance.

Q 04/05

Which president desegregated the US armed forces by executive order?

A) Franklin D. Roosevelt

B) Dwight Eisenhower

C) John F. Kennedy

D) Harry Truman

Answer · why

D) Harry Truman

Harry Truman signed the order in 1948 after learning how a South Carolina police chief had blinded Sergeant Isaac Woodard hours after his Army dischar...

Q 05/05

What did Mamie Till insist on for Emmett Till's funeral?

A) An open casket

B) A private burial

C) An honour guard

D) A silent march

Answer · why

A) An open casket

An open casket let thousands of mourners see what the killers had done to her son, and Jet magazine printed photographs that spread the outrage across...