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This Black movie trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers a century of Black cinema: the race films of Oscar Micheaux, the all-Black musicals of the 1940s, Sidney Poitier's barrier-breaking Oscar, the blaxploitation boom of Shaft and Sweet Sweetback, the hood classics of the 1990s, the comedies people still quote (Coming to America, Friday, House Party), and the modern era of Moonlight, Get Out, Black Panther and Sinners. Along the way it asks about the first Black actors to win in each Oscar category, the directors from Spike Lee to Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler, and the small details fans love, like the budget of Get Out or the fictional country of Zamunda. The questions run from easy ones for anyone who watched Bad Boys on cable to hard ones for people who can name the studio that made The Wiz. It works for a movie night, a Black History Month event, or a bar quiz where the film buffs need humbling. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and reference sources, and each question shows an explanation and its citation once you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was the first African American to win an Academy Award, for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind?
Hattie McDaniel
She could not attend the film's Atlanta premiere because it was held in a whites-only theatre.
Q 02Sidney Poitier became the first Black actor to win Best Actor in 1964 for which film?
Lilies of the Field
He was also the first Bahamian to win, and had been the first African American nominated for Best Actor for The Defiant Ones in 1958.
Q 03Halle Berry became the first African American woman to win Best Actress for which 2001 film?
Monster's Ball
She had earlier played Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American woman ever nominated for Best Actress, for Carmen Jones in 1954.
Q 04Louis Gossett Jr. became the first African American to win Best Supporting Actor for which 1982 film?
An Officer and a Gentleman
He played the drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, and had won an Emmy for Roots five years earlier.
Q 05Denzel Washington's second Oscar came for which 2001 film, in which he plays a corrupt LAPD officer?
Training Day
His character Alonzo Harris takes rookie Ethan Hawke through one 24-hour shift; Hawke was nominated too.
Q 06Glory tells the story of which Civil War regiment?
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry
Matthew Broderick plays Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, with Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman as fictional soldiers in the unit.
Q 07Whoopi Goldberg won her Oscar for playing a psychic in which 1990 film?
Ghost
She became only the second African American woman to win an Oscar and is one of the few entertainers with an EGOT.
Q 08The 1985 film The Color Purple was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. How many did it win?
None
Quincy Jones scored and produced it, the only Spielberg film up to then not scored by John Williams.
Q 09Which 2016 film was the first LGBTQ-themed feature with an all-Black cast to win Best Picture?
Moonlight
The win was announced only after La La Land had been read out by mistake, thanks to a mixed-up envelope.
Q 10Which film was wrongly announced as Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars before Moonlight was declared the winner?
La La Land
Warren Beatty had been handed the duplicate Best Actress envelope, which named Emma Stone's film.
Q 1112 Years a Slave is based on the memoir of which man, kidnapped in 1841?
Solomon Northup
Its win made Steve McQueen the first Black director of a Best Picture winner, and Lupita Nyong'o won Best Supporting Actress.
Q 12Jordan Peele's Get Out was made for a budget of about how much?
$4.5 million
It grossed nearly $260 million and won Peele the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in his directing debut.
Q 13In Get Out, what is the surname of Rose's family, whom Chris travels upstate to meet?
Armitage
The film introduced the phrase 'the Sunken Place' into everyday speech.
Q 21With Boyz n the Hood, John Singleton became the youngest and first African American nominee for which Oscar?
Best Director
He was 24, and the film also marked the screen debuts of Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut and Regina King.
Q 22Boyz n the Hood takes its title from a 1987 song by which rapper?
Eazy-E
The song was written by Ice Cube, who plays Doughboy in the film opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. and Laurence Fishburne.
Q 23The 1993 film Menace II Society was the directorial debut of which sibling filmmakers?
The Hughes brothers
It follows Caine Lawson in Watts and gave Jada Pinkett her theatrical film debut.
Q 14The doppelgängers who terrorise Adelaide's family in Jordan Peele's Us are called what?
The Tethered
Lupita Nyong'o plays both Adelaide and her double, and much of the film was shot in Santa Cruz.
Q 15Black Panther was the first superhero film to receive a nomination for which Oscar?
Best Picture
It grossed over $1.3 billion, the most ever for a film by a Black director, and won three Oscars.
Q 16In Black Panther, who challenges T'Challa for the throne of Wakanda?
Killmonger
Michael B. Jordan's villain wants to end Wakanda's isolation and start a global revolution.
Q 17Ryan Coogler's 2025 horror film Sinners stars his frequent leading man in a dual role as what?
Twin brothers
It is set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, and Ludwig Göransson scored it, as he did Black Panther.
Q 18Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing is famous for its soundtrack use of which Public Enemy song?
Fight the Power
The film premiered at Cannes and is set over one scorching day in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
Q 19Spike Lee's feature debut, She's Gotta Have It, was shot in 1986 for a budget of about how much?
$175,000
It grossed $7.1 million and won him the Award of the Youth at Cannes.
Q 20Spike Lee's 1992 'Malcolm X' was based on an autobiography written with which author?
Alex Haley
Denzel Washington's title performance won the New York Film Critics Circle award and an Oscar nomination.
Q 24In New Jack City, Wesley Snipes plays which crack-era drug lord?
Nino Brown
Mario Van Peebles directed it as his feature debut, with Ice-T as the undercover cop out to bring him down.
Q 25In Coming to America, Eddie Murphy plays Akeem, crown prince of which fictional African nation?
Zamunda
He goes to Queens, New York, to find a bride who will love him for himself; Murphy and Arsenio Hall each play several roles.
Q 26The 1995 comedy Friday, starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, was directed by whom?
F. Gary Gray
Ice Cube co-wrote it with DJ Pooh; the same director went on to make Set It Off and Straight Outta Compton.
Q 27The 1990 comedy House Party starred which hip-hop duo?
Kid 'n Play
Reginald Hudlin based it on his award-winning Harvard student film, and Martin Lawrence and Robin Harris co-star.
Q 28Love & Basketball, the 2000 film starring Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps, was the directing debut of whom?
Gina Prince-Bythewood
Spike Lee produced it, and she went on to direct The Woman King in 2022.
Q 29Waiting to Exhale, starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett, was the directing debut of which actor?
Forest Whitaker
The 1995 film adapts Terry McMillan's novel about four friends in Phoenix.
Q 30In Set It Off, four friends in Los Angeles turn to what crime?
Bank robbery
Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox and debutante Kimberly Elise star; each has her own reason for the heist.