Black Lives Matter Trivia
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49 free Black Lives Matter trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few movements of the past fifteen years have moved from a social-media post to street murals, stadium gestures and statute books as fast as Black Lives Matter. The story runs through Ferguson and Staten Island, a quarterback's decision to kneel, the summer of 2020 and a federal holiday, and a great deal of it is already half-remembered or misremembered. These 49 questions cover the three founders and the night the hashtag was born, the cases that gave the movement its chants, the anthem protests and the contracts and awards that followed, the marches that set a national record in 2020, the statues and flags and team names that fell, and the musicians, athletes and novelists who answered in their own work. Every stem carries a second fact to reason from, and every answer comes with a short explanation. The facts are stated as the cited record states them, with dates attached. Play it on your phone, print it for a classroom or quiz night, or use it to check what you actually remember about a decade of headlines.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Whose killing in Sanford, Florida, ended in the July 2013 acquittal that sparked #BlackLivesMatter?
Trayvon Martin
Trayvon Martin was walking back from a convenience store when Zimmerman, the gated community's neighbourhood-watch coordinator, followed him; the 13 July 2013 not-guilty verdict sparked the phrase that became a movement.
Q 02In May 2020 a Minneapolis store clerk called police on George Floyd, saying he had paid with what?
A counterfeit $20 bill
A counterfeit $20 bill was the whole basis of the call; the teenage clerk later spoke of his 'disbelief and guilt', and it was never established that Floyd knew the note was fake.
Q 03Which NBA team sat out its 26 August 2020 playoff game against Orlando after police shot Jacob Blake?
Milwaukee Bucks
The Milwaukee Bucks simply stayed in their locker room before Game 5; Orlando refused to accept a forfeit, and the NBA called off three days of playoff games before the players agreed to resume.
Q 04Protesters in which English city toppled slave trader Edward Colston's statue in June 2020?
Bristol
Bristol fished the statue out of its harbour four days later and now displays it, graffiti and all, in the M Shed museum.
Q 05Which sportswear brand's 2018 ad starring Colin Kaepernick read 'Believe in something'?
Nike
Nike had quietly kept Kaepernick under contract since 2011; the NFL's own spokesperson responded that the issues he had raised deserve 'our attention and action'.
Q 06Which state retired its Confederate-emblem flag in 2020 and adopted a magnolia design in January 2021?
Mississippi
Mississippi voters approved the magnolia flag in November 2020 under a law that barred the Confederate emblem and required the words 'In God We Trust'.
Q 07What did Donald Trump hold up at St. John's Church on 1 June 2020 after Lafayette Square was cleared?
A Bible
A Bible was Trump's own idea, reportedly over aides' suggestions, and he posed with it before the church's fire-damaged parish house rather than going inside.
Q 08Which mayor had 'Black Lives Matter' painted in 35-foot letters on 16th Street NW in June 2020?
Muriel Bowser
Muriel Bowser had the mural painted on the street leading to the White House and renamed two blocks Black Lives Matter Plaza the same day; the city removed it in March 2025 under pressure from Congress.
Q 09Whose 8 June 2020 call led NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its races two days later?
Bubba Wallace
Bubba Wallace, the first Black driver with a full-time Cup ride since Wendell Scott in 1971, raced the night of the ban in a car painted with #BlackLivesMatter and the words 'Compassion, Love, Understanding'.
Q 10Which player wore seven masks at the 2020 US Open, each bearing a Black victim's name?
Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka packed seven masks, a different name for each round, and needed them all on her way to the title; 'the point is to make people start talking', she said.
Q 11Which co-founder's 2013 Facebook post after the Zimmerman verdict gave the movement its name?
Alicia Garza
Alicia Garza wrote that she was surprised 'at how little Black lives matter' and signed off 'Our lives matter'; a friend shared the post with a hashtag, and the phrase stuck.
Q 12Which co-founder created the hashtag in 2013 and wrote the memoir When They Call You a Terrorist?
Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Cullors added the hashtag when she shared a friend's Facebook post; her 2018 memoir traces her activism back to being arrested at the age of 12.
Q 13Which co-founder bought the movement's .com domain and built its first social media pages in 2013?
Opal Tometi
Q 21Which 12-year-old holding an airsoft replica pistol was shot by Cleveland police in November 2014?
Tamir Rice
Tamir Rice's replica lacked the orange tip meant to mark it as a toy, and the officer fired almost immediately on arriving; a 911 caller had already said the gun was 'probably fake'.
Q 22A 2017 Texas jail law is named for which woman who died in a Waller County cell after a 2015 traffic stop?
Sandra Bland
Sandra Bland had been pulled over for failing to signal a lane change; investigators found the jail skipped required cell checks and mental-health training.
Q 23Whose 2016 shooting at a Minnesota traffic stop was streamed live on Facebook by his girlfriend in the car?
Philando Castile
Opal Tometi, a Phoenix-raised daughter of Nigerian immigrants, contacted the other two after seeing the hashtag and proposed giving it a home online; she now goes by Ayọ Tometi.
Q 14Which country's MP Petter Eide nominated Black Lives Matter for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize?
Norway
Norway's Petter Eide said the movement had forced countries beyond the United States to face racism in their own societies.
Q 15Which Australian city's Peace Prize, for 'peace with justice', was awarded to Black Lives Matter in 2017?
Sydney
The Sydney Peace Prize citation praised the movement for 'reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism'; the award was presented at Sydney Town Hall that November.
Q 16Officer Darren Wilson's shooting of which 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, set off weeks of protest in 2014?
Michael Brown
Michael Brown had graduated from Normandy High School; a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Wilson that November, and the Justice Department later found he fired in self-defence.
Q 17Five St. Louis Rams players took the field in November 2014 in a silent nod to which Ferguson protest chant?
Hands up, don't shoot
Hands up, don't shoot grew from early reports that the Ferguson teenager had raised his hands, accounts a federal investigation later found unsupported; four Congressional Black Caucus members repeated the gesture in the House.
Q 18A 2015 Justice Department report found Ferguson's council relied on what to fund municipal services?
Court fines and fees
Court fines and fees were budgeted to rise every year; in 2010 the city's finance director warned the police chief that collections would fall short 'unless ticket writing ramps up significantly'.
Q 19Notre Dame's women's team wore which phrase on warm-ups on 13 December 2014, days after LeBron James did?
I can't breathe
I can't breathe were the last words of a Staten Island man held in a police chokehold that July; President Obama said LeBron 'did the right thing' when critics complained.
Q 20Who died in a banned NYPD chokehold in July 2014 during a Staten Island arrest over untaxed cigarettes?
Eric Garner
Eric Garner repeated the same three-word plea 11 times while pinned to the pavement, and a bystander's phone video turned his death into a national case.
Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor stopped over a brake light, had calmly told the officer he had a firearm, one he was licensed to carry; Diamond Reynolds began her stream moments after the shots.
Q 24DeRay Mckesson co-founded which police-reform platform in 2015, the group behind 2020's '8 Can't Wait'?
Campaign Zero
Campaign Zero launched in August 2015 with ten policy proposals; its 8 Can't Wait project tracks eight use-of-force rules city by city, though many departments already had some of them in place.
Q 25Nate Boyer, who convinced Colin Kaepernick to kneel instead of sit in 2016, served in which Army unit?
The Green Berets
The Green Berets veteran suggested kneeling as a more respectful gesture toward veterans, and Kaepernick adopted it from the final preseason game onward, kneeling before every game that season.
Q 26Which NFL team, Super Bowl XLVII finalists, was Colin Kaepernick playing for when he first knelt in 2016?
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers had reached that Super Bowl, their first since 1994, only after Kaepernick took over as starter mid-season in 2012 from an injured Alex Smith.
Q 27Which Minneapolis police officer was convicted in April 2021 of murdering George Floyd?
Derek Chauvin
Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts and sentenced to 22 and a half years; the three other officers at the scene were convicted in later cases.
Q 28Which US women's soccer star knelt for the anthem at a 4 September 2016 NWSL match, citing Kaepernick?
Megan Rapinoe
Megan Rapinoe knelt again before a US match against Thailand days later, prompting US Soccer to say it expected players to stand.
Q 29Colin Kaepernick's grievance against NFL owners, settled confidentially in 2019, accused them of what?
Collusion
Collusion to keep him unsigned was the charge Kaepernick filed in 2017 after months without a team; later in 2019 he swapped a hastily arranged NFL workout for a public session of his own, and no team signed him.
Q 30Colin Kaepernick received which organisation's top honour, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, in 2018?
Amnesty International
Amnesty International took the award's name from a poem Seamus Heaney wrote for it, 'From the Republic of Conscience'; Nelson Mandela and Václav Havel were earlier recipients.