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99 free African American History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
These 36 African American trivia questions with answers run from the colonial era to the Space Shuttle. The early questions cover the ground most people know: the Underground Railroad, the Emancipation Proclamation, Jackie Robinson, the March on Washington and Brown v. Board of Education. Then the quiz digs deeper into Reconstruction and the first Black senator, the Greensboro sit-ins, Bloody Sunday in Selma, the Tulsa massacre, Frederick Douglass's newspaper, Nat Turner's revolt and the Little Rock Nine. It also makes room for firsts beyond politics: the first Black Oscar winner, the first African American woman to earn a pilot's license, the first Black American in space, the NASA mathematician John Glenn trusted over the computer, and the entrepreneur Guinness credits as America's first self-made female millionaire. It suits Black History Month classrooms, church and community quiz nights, and anyone who wants more than the same ten names. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and reference sources, and each question shows the sentence that confirms it once you have answered.
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Q 01Who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking a Civil Rights milestone?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1, 1955, led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a transformative event in the Civil Rights Movement.
Q 02Which 1896 Supreme Court case established the 'separate but equal' precedent?
Plessy v. Ferguson
Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth Black, deliberately boarded a whites-only train car in New Orleans in 1892 to create the test case.
Q 03Who authored the influential autobiography 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'?
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, writer and poet, chronicled her young and early years in it, and the 1969 book became a seminal work in American literature.
Q 04In what year did President Abraham Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation?
1863
Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863; it applied only to the ten states still in rebellion and freed no one in the loyal border states.
Q 05Who was the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson debuted at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, breaking the modern color barrier; MLB retired his number 42 across every team in 1997.
Q 06Which African American scientist developed hundreds of uses for the peanut and sweet potato?
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver's 1921 testimony to Congress supporting a peanut tariff made him a national celebrity, though he patented only three of his hundreds of peanut and sweet potato products.
Q 07What major event in August 1963 saw Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his 'I Have a Dream' speech?
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held on August 28, 1963, was a massive protest where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Q 08Who was the first African American Supreme Court Justice?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education, and served as a Justice from 1967 to 1991.
Q 09Which amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States?
13th
The 13th Amendment, ratified December 6, 1865, abolished slavery nationwide but carved out an exception for involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
Q 10Which 1920s African American cultural movement produced Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Claude McKay?
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance, centred on uptown Manhattan in the 1920s, was also called the New Negro Movement after Alain Locke's 1925 anthology The New Negro.
Q 11Which president signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson signed it at the White House; Kennedy had proposed the bill in June 1963, and Johnson pushed it through a 72-day Senate filibuster led by Georgia's Richard Russell.
Q 12What was the primary goal of the Freedom Riders in 1961?
To challenge segregation on interstate buses and terminals.
One of their buses was firebombed outside Anniston, Alabama; the campaign forced the Interstate Commerce Commission to ban segregated terminals that November.
Q 13Who was the first African American woman to travel into space?
Q 21Guinness names which hair-care entrepreneur as America's first self-made woman millionaire?
Madam C. J. Walker
Guinness World Records lists Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, as America's first self-made woman millionaire; she built her fortune on hair-care products for Black women and funded NAACP anti-lynching work.
Q 22Hiram Revels, the first African American in Congress, was elected to the Senate from which state?
Mississippi
Hiram Revels took a Mississippi Senate seat in 1870 that had sat empty since secession, and later became the first president of what is now Alcorn State University.
Q 23Inventor Garrett Morgan sold the rights to which 1923 invention to General Electric for $40,000?
Mae C. Jemison
Mae C. Jemison flew her only mission, STS-47, in September 1992, a joint US-Japan Spacelab flight aboard Endeavour; she later played a Starfleet officer on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Q 14In what year did Sojourner Truth deliver her 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech?
1851
Sojourner Truth spoke at the Akron, Ohio women's rights convention in May 1851; the famous 'Ain't I a Woman?' wording comes from Frances Gage's 1863 version, absent from the report printed weeks after.
Q 15The Stono Rebellion, a significant slave revolt, occurred in what colonial state in 1739?
South Carolina
The Stono Rebellion was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies prior to the American Revolution, beginning on September 9, 1739, in the colony of South Carolina.
Q 16Which group of African American pilots famously flew in World War II despite segregation?
The Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, and their red-painted tails earned the fighter pilots the nickname Red Tails.
Q 17In what year did the Supreme Court unanimously decide Brown v. Board of Education?
1954
The 9-0 ruling overturned the 'separate but equal' doctrine in public education, though it set no deadline and desegregation dragged on for years.
Q 18Which civil rights organisation did W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington and Moorfield Storey help found in 1909?
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Its founding was prompted by the 1908 Springfield, Illinois race riot, and its first president, Moorfield Storey, was a white Boston lawyer.
Q 19Which holiday commemorates the 1865 announcement of emancipation to enslaved people in Texas?
Juneteenth
Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger arrived at Galveston and announced that enslaved people in Texas were free; it became a federal holiday in 2021.
Q 20In 1968, who became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress?
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Chisholm won New York's 12th district in 1968 with the slogan 'Unbought and unbossed', and four years later ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A traffic signal
Garrett Morgan patented his three-position traffic signal in 1923 after seeing a car collide with a horse-drawn carriage; its arms could be raised halfway to warn drivers, and he sold the rights to General Electric.
Q 24In which country did Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman pilot, earn her licence?
France
Bessie Coleman earned her licence in France in June 1921 from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale after training at the Caudron brothers' school at Le Crotoy, because American flight schools refused her.
Q 25The 1960 Greensboro sit-ins began at the lunch counter of which store chain?
Woolworth's
Four North Carolina A&T freshmen sat down at the Greensboro Woolworth's lunch counter on February 1, 1960; the building reopened in 2010 as the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
Q 26The Tulsa neighborhood destroyed in the 1921 race massacre, nicknamed 'Black Wall Street', was called what?
Greenwood
Greenwood, Tulsa's prosperous Black district, was burned over May 31 and June 1, 1921; more than 35 square blocks were destroyed and about 10,000 Black residents were left homeless.
Q 27Frederick Douglass began publishing which anti-slavery newspaper in Rochester, New York, in 1847?
The North Star
Douglass launched The North Star in Rochester on December 3, 1847, naming it for the star that guided freedom seekers north; supporters in Britain raised the money for his printing press.
Q 28Nat Turner led the deadliest slave revolt in U.S. history in August 1831 in which state?
Virginia
Nat Turner's uprising in Southampton County, Virginia, killed an estimated 55 white people over two days in August 1831 and led to harsher slave codes across the South.
Q 29Carl Stokes became the first Black mayor of which major US city in 1967?
Cleveland
Carl Stokes won Cleveland's mayoral race in November 1967, becoming the first Black mayor of a major US city; his brother Louis Stokes served 15 terms in the U.S. House.
Q 30Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar for her role in which 1939 film?
Gone with the Wind
Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind at the February 1940 ceremony, where she was seated at a segregated table apart from the film's white cast.