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50 free Civil Rights Movement trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This civil rights trivia quiz covers the American civil rights movement from Plessy v. Ferguson to the Fair Housing Act in 50 free questions with answers: Brown v. Board of Education, the murder of Emmett Till, Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks and the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott, the Little Rock Nine, the Greensboro sit-ins and the birth of SNCC, the Freedom Rides, James Meredith at Ole Miss, Birmingham and the Children's Crusade, the March on Washington, the Sixteenth Street church bombing, Freedom Summer, Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 convention, Selma and the Voting Rights Act, Loving v. Virginia, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and the assassination of Dr. King. About a third of the questions are the ones taught in school; the rest go deeper into names, dates and details for people who have read the histories. It works as a Black History Month classroom round, a family quiz or a solo test. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1896 Supreme Court case that established the "separate but equal" doctrine was Plessy v. what?
Ferguson
Homer Plessy, one-eighth Black, had deliberately boarded a whites-only Louisiana rail car; only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented.
Q 02Which justice cast the lone dissent in Plessy, writing "Our Constitution is color-blind"?
John Marshall Harlan
His grandson and namesake sat on the Warren Court that heard Brown v. Board six decades later.
Q 03In what year did Brown v. Board of Education rule segregated public schools unconstitutional?
1954
The decision under Chief Justice Earl Warren was unanimous; a follow-up ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed".
Q 04Which president desegregated the US armed forces by executive order in 1948?
Harry Truman
Executive Order 9981 came a year after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's colour line.
Q 05How old was Emmett Till when he was murdered in Mississippi in August 1955?
14
His mother's decision to hold an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and Jet magazine's photographs, galvanised a generation of activists.
Q 06After their acquittal, Emmett Till's killers confessed to which magazine for $4,000?
Look
Protected by double jeopardy, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam told journalist William Bradford Huie exactly what they had done.
Q 07Nine months before Rosa Parks, which 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her Montgomery bus seat?
Claudette Colvin
She was one of the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the case that actually ended bus segregation.
Q 08How long did the Montgomery bus boycott last?
381 days
About 90 percent of Montgomery's Black residents took part, and Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 52,500 leaflets to launch it.
Q 09Which Supreme Court case desegregated the buses and ended the Montgomery boycott?
Browder v. Gayle
The November 1956 ruling made the young Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, a national figure.
Q 10Rosa Parks was secretary of the local chapter of which organisation when she was arrested?
The NAACP
She had just returned from nonviolence training at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.
Q 11Which president sent the 101st Airborne to escort the Little Rock Nine into Central High School in 1957?
Dwight Eisenhower
Governor Orval Faubus had used the Arkansas National Guard to keep the students out; the next year he closed every high school in the city.
Q 12Which of the Little Rock Nine became the first Black graduate of Central High School in 1958?
Ernest Green
The nine received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Clinton in 1999.
Q 13The Greensboro sit-in of February 1, 1960 began at the lunch counter of which chain store?
Woolworth's
The four freshmen from North Carolina A&T kept their receipts from other counters and asked why their money was good everywhere but there.
Q 21The Birmingham march by more than a thousand schoolchildren in May 1963 became known as what?
The Children's Crusade
James Bevel of the SCLC proposed it when the campaign ran short of adults willing to be arrested.
Q 22Which NAACP field secretary was shot dead in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963?
Medgar Evers
Byron De La Beckwith walked free from two hung juries in 1964 and was finally convicted in 1994.
Q 23Roughly how many people attended the March on Washington on August 28, 1963?
250,000
The Kennedy administration had opposed the march at first, then worked to make sure it succeeded.
Q 14SNCC was founded in April 1960 at a conference called by which veteran organiser?
Ella Baker
The gathering was at Shaw University in Raleigh; SNCC went on to organise the Freedom Rides.
Q 15The 1961 Freedom Rides were organised by which group to test a Supreme Court ruling on interstate travel?
CORE
The first ride left Washington on May 4, 1961; about 436 riders took part in at least 60 rides that year.
Q 16In which Alabama town was a Freedom Riders bus firebombed on Mother's Day 1961?
Anniston
In Birmingham, Bull Connor gave the Klan fifteen minutes with the riders before police arrived.
Q 17Arrested Freedom Riders in Mississippi were sent to which notorious prison?
Parchman Farm
Under a "jail, no bail" policy they served 39 days each, the maximum without losing the right to appeal.
Q 18Who became the first Black student admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962?
James Meredith
Two people died and 28 federal agents were shot; in 1966 he was himself shot on the second day of his March Against Fear.
Q 19What was the Birmingham commissioner who turned dogs and fire hoses on child marchers in 1963 known as?
Bull Connor
Eugene Connor had lost the mayoral election but refused to leave office; the television pictures forced the Kennedy administration to act.
Q 20On what did Martin Luther King Jr. write his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"?
The margins of a newspaper
He had been refused writing paper in solitary confinement after his arrest on April 12, 1963.
Q 24Who was the chief organiser of the March on Washington, working alongside A. Philip Randolph?
Bayard Rustin
An openly gay Quaker who had taught King Gandhian nonviolence, he was kept in the background and honoured with a posthumous Medal of Freedom in 2013.
Q 25Who was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington?
John Lewis
The 23-year-old SNCC chairman used his speech to criticise the Kennedy administration for not protecting activists in the Deep South.
Q 26How many girls died in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church?
Four
The last of the Klansmen responsible was not convicted until 2002.
Q 27What date did Lyndon Johnson sign the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public accommodations?
July 2, 1964
It followed a 54-day Senate filibuster and banned discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.
Q 28The civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in June 1964 were James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and whom?
Michael Schwerner
The killers included members of the Neshoba County sheriff's department; the case inspired the film Mississippi Burning.
Q 29Which sharecropper-turned-activist asked 'Is this America?' at the 1964 Democratic convention?
Fannie Lou Hamer
She had been beaten in a Winona jail in 1963 and said she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired".
Q 30What "compromise" did President Johnson offer the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Atlantic City?
Two non-voting at-large seats
The MFDP angrily refused; its members later borrowed passes and sat in the seats the official delegation had abandoned.