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180 free Black History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
91 free Black history trivia questions with answers. From Harriet Tubman's daring rescues to the landmark Supreme Court decisions that dismantled segregation, Black history is woven into every chapter of the American story. This 180-question quiz, built to serve as BHM trivia questions in February and Black history trivia all year, spans centuries of resilience, creativity, and leadership — covering civil rights icons, scientific pioneers, literary giants, and the movements that transformed a nation. How much do you really know?
30 of 180 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who delivered the famous 'I Have a Dream' speech during the 1963 March on Washington?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech on August 28, 1963, calling for an end to racism and envisioning a future of racial harmony.
Q 02Who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, sparking a major boycott?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat on December 1, 1955 led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement that lasted 381 days.
Q 03Who was the first African American president of the United States?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States in 2008, becoming the first African American to hold the office. He served two terms until 2017.
Q 04What was the racial segregation system enforced by statute in the American South called?
Jim Crow laws
The name probably comes from a minstrel-show song called 'Jump Jim Crow'; the statutes ran from the late 19th century to the mid-20th.
Q 05Which abolitionist's 1845 Narrative was followed by My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855, the second of his three autobiographies?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, whose Narrative was a bestseller that exposed him as a fugitive, so he left for Britain until supporters bought his freedom. Life and Times, the third book, came in 1881.
Q 06What landmark 1954 Supreme Court case declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional?
Brown v. Board of Education
The unanimous ruling held that segregated public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause even where facilities are equal in quality, and became a model for later impact litigation.
Q 07Which Underground Railroad conductor is known as the 'Moses of her people'?
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 and made approximately 13 missions to rescue about 70 enslaved people using the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.
Q 08Which amendment to the US Constitution, ratified on 6 December 1865, abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime?
13th
13th: that exception clause was exploited for decades through convict leasing and the Black Codes, a story Ava DuVernay told in the 2016 documentary 13th.
Q 09Who was the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier when he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. His courage in facing hostility paved the way for integration in professional sports.
Q 10What 1920s New York movement celebrated African American culture, art and literature?
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance, centred on Manhattan's Harlem neighbourhood in the 1920s, produced writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and was fuelled by the Great Migration of Black Southerners to northern cities.
Q 11Which civil rights leader co-founded the NAACP in 1909?
W.E.B. Du Bois
He edited the NAACP's journal The Crisis for decades and had earlier risen to prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement.
Q 12Which year's Civil Rights Act outlawed bias by race, religion, sex and national origin?
1964
Lyndon B. Johnson signed it at the White House on July 2, 1964, after the House accepted the Senate's amended version.
Q 13Who wrote the novel 'Beloved,' which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988?
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' (1987) is set after the Civil War and explores the haunting legacy of slavery. Morrison later won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Q 21Who was the first African American woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress?
Halle Berry
Halle Berry won Best Actress at the 2002 ceremony for Monster's Ball (2001), playing the widow Leticia Musgrove, the first Black woman to take the award.
Q 22The 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches helped push which federal law through Congress that same year?
The Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act, signed by Lyndon Johnson on 6 August 1965, followed the Selma marches; after Bloody Sunday he urged Congress to pass it in a televised address on 15 March.
Q 23Medgar Evers, murdered at his home in Jackson in 1963, held which post?
Q 14Which Tuskegee Institute scientist became famous for developing hundreds of products from peanuts?
George Washington Carver
Carver wanted poor farmers to grow peanuts and sweet potatoes instead of only cotton; he is often mistakenly credited with inventing peanut butter.
Q 15Which 1969 Maya Angelou autobiography covers her childhood, up to age 17?
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) is the first of Maya Angelou's seven autobiographical volumes, ending with the birth of her son when she was 17.
Q 16In 'Hidden Figures', which mathematician's calculations were critical to NASA's early space missions?
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson's orbital mechanics calculations were essential to the success of the first U.S. crewed spaceflights. She verified the computer calculations for John Glenn's orbital mission in 1962.
Q 17Roughly how many Black Americans left the rural South in the Great Migration of 1910 to 1970?
Six million
About six million Black Americans left the rural South between 1910 and 1970, one of the largest internal migrations in history, driven by Jim Crow segregation, violence and northern factory jobs.
Q 18Who founded the Black Panther Party in 1966?
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party advocated for armed self-defense and community social programs.
Q 19Which African American inventor designed a three-way traffic signal in 1923?
Garrett Morgan
Garrett Morgan patented his three-position traffic signal in 1923 and sold the rights to General Electric; his earlier safety hood was used in the 1916 Cleveland waterworks tunnel rescue.
Q 20Which 1955 killing of a 14-year-old from Chicago, visiting relatives in Mississippi, galvanised the civil rights movement after an open-casket funeral?
The lynching of Emmett Till
The lynching of Emmett Till, whose mother Mamie insisted the world see what had been done to her son; Jet magazine's photographs did the rest. Rosa Parks later said she thought of him when she kept her seat that December.
NAACP field secretary for Mississippi
Medgar Evers was the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi from 1954; his killer, Byron De La Beckwith, escaped two hung juries in 1964 and was finally convicted in 1994.
Q 24Which African American woman became the first self-made female millionaire in the United States?
Madam C.J. Walker
Madam C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove) built a hair care empire in the early 1900s, becoming the first female self-made millionaire in America. She was also a major philanthropist supporting Black causes.
Q 25What did a white mob destroy in the Tulsa Race Massacre of May 31 to June 1, 1921?
Greenwood, known as 'Black Wall Street'
More than 35 square blocks of one of the wealthiest Black communities in the country were burned to the ground in two days.
Q 26Who was the first African American Supreme Court Justice?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall, appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson, who had won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Court as NAACP counsel. Clarence Thomas succeeded him in 1991.
Q 27Which musician is known as the 'Father of the Blues'?
W.C. Handy
Handy titled his 1941 autobiography Father of the Blues; his composition 'St. Louis Blues' became one of the most recorded songs of its era.
Q 28Which group, formed by Black pastors in 1957 after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, coordinated protest across the South?
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference grew from a January 1957 meeting at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church; Martin Luther King Jr. served as its first president.
Q 29Which African American poet wrote the poem 'Harlem' (also known as 'A Dream Deferred')?
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes published 'Harlem' in 1951 as part of his poetry collection 'Montage of a Dream Deferred.' Its famous opening line 'What happens to a dream deferred?' became iconic in American literature.
Q 30Who was the first African American woman to travel to space?
Mae Jemison
Mae Jemison became the first African American woman in space on September 12, 1992, when she flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. She is also a physician and engineer.