Mlk Jr
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140 free Mlk Jr trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free MLK Jr trivia questions with answers. Test your knowledge of one of America's most influential civil rights leaders with our comprehensive MLK Jr. trivia quiz. From his iconic speeches to his groundbreaking activism, discover how much you know about Martin Luther King Jr.'s remarkable life and lasting legacy. Challenge yourself and learn more about the man who changed the course of American history.
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Q 01What was Martin Luther King Jr.'s name at birth?
Michael Jr.
Michael Jr. was his birth name; his father, also a Michael, came home from a 1934 trip to Europe and changed both their names to Martin Luther.
Q 02Roughly how many people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom?
250,000
250,000 is the most widely cited estimate; organizers had aimed for at least 100,000, and the turnout made it the largest demonstration the capital had yet seen.
Q 03Who was the principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom?
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin ran the planning as deputy to A. Philip Randolph, who took the lead title because some leaders feared attacks on Rustin as a gay man and former Communist.
Q 04Which Indian leader's campaigns against British rule became the model for King's protest methods?
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi won King over in 1950, when a lecture on the Indian leader so electrified the seminary student that he went out and bought half a dozen books about him.
Q 05What prestigious award did Martin Luther King Jr. receive in 1964?
Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize in hand at 35, King was then the youngest man to receive it, and he pledged the entire award of about $54,000 to the civil rights movement.
Q 06King was assassinated on the 40th birthday of which writer, who had once run the SCLC's New York office?
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, born April 4, 1928, won the SCLC job in 1960 after staging a benefit revue, Cabaret for Freedom, to raise money for King's movement.
Q 07Which Scottish university accepted King for doctoral study before he chose to stay in the United States?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh accepted King for postgraduate study in December 1950, but he enrolled instead at an American school whose philosophers he wanted to study under.
Q 08During the 1955 bus boycott, King was chosen to lead which newly formed organization?
Montgomery Improvement Association
The Montgomery Improvement Association elected King president on December 5, 1955, and ran the car pools and weekly mass meetings that kept the boycott going.
Q 09Which U2 song from 1984 was written as a tribute to King?
"Pride (In the Name of Love)"
"Pride (In the Name of Love)" places the shooting in the early morning of April 4, though King was shot just after 6 p.m.; Bono has admitted the slip and sometimes sings 'early evening'.
Q 10In 1957 King flew to West Africa to watch which nation celebrate its independence from Britain?
Ghana
Ghana became independent in March 1957, and its new prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, invited King and his wife to the ceremony in Accra.
Q 11Which landmark speech did Martin Luther King Jr. give at the 1963 March on Washington?
"I Have a Dream"
"I Have a Dream" was partly improvised: toward the end King departed from his prepared text for its most famous passage, urged on by a gospel singer seated behind him.
Q 12Which Washington official publicly branded King 'the most notorious liar in the country' in 1964?
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover lashed out at a November 1964 press conference after King criticized the FBI's handling of civil rights cases; the bureau had been wiretapping King for a year.
Q 13Which U.S. president declared a national day of mourning after King's assassination?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Q 21Which King speech came exactly one year before his assassination?
"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" was delivered on April 4, 1967; the backlash was swift, and the Washington Post wrote that King had diminished his usefulness to his cause and country.
Q 22Which Birmingham official turned fire hoses and police dogs on young marchers in May 1963?
Bull Connor
Bull Connor had just lost a race for mayor and was refusing to leave office when he turned hoses and dogs on the marchers; the images shocked the country.
Q 23What was the final speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. the day before his assassination?
Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed Sunday, April 7, 1968, a national day of mourning for King and ordered flags on federal buildings flown at half-staff.
Q 14Which Buddhist monk did King nominate in 1967 for the same honor he had won three years earlier?
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Thích Nhất Hạnh first met King in 1966; King's nomination called the exiled Vietnamese monk an apostle of peace, but the prize committee made no award that year.
Q 15At which Atlanta church was Martin Luther King Jr. co-pastor alongside his father?
Ebenezer Baptist Church
Ebenezer Baptist Church had been led by King's grandfather and then his father; he joined as co-pastor in 1960, a move that also brought him closer to his movement's headquarters.
Q 16Which 1963 text answered white clergy who had called King's protests 'unwise and untimely'?
"Letter from Birmingham Jail"
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" was begun in the margins of the newspaper that printed the clergymen's statement, then continued on scraps of paper until his lawyers could bring a pad.
Q 17The 1955 bus boycott King led began after which woman was arrested for refusing to give up her seat?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks, arrested on December 1, 1955, was no accidental rebel: she had long served as secretary of the local NAACP chapter, and the boycott began the following Monday.
Q 18Which U.S. president signed the bill creating a federal holiday in King's honor?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan signed the bill on November 2, 1983, fifteen years after a congressman first proposed the holiday in the days following King's death.
Q 19What opened in 1991 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where King was shot?
National Civil Rights Museum
The National Civil Rights Museum is built around a motel that once hosted stars such as Aretha Franklin; it went on renting rooms for nearly twenty years after the shooting before it was converted.
Q 20Coretta Scott was training for which career when she met King in 1952?
Concert singer
Concert singer was her goal as a conservatory voice student; she gave up the stage but later raised money for the movement with her Freedom Concerts.
"I've Been to the Mountaintop"
'I've Been to the Mountaintop' was delivered on April 3, 1968, in Memphis; King told the crowd he had 'seen the Promised Land' though he might not get there with them.
Q 24In 1966 King took the movement north with an open-housing campaign in which city?
Chicago
The 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement demanded open housing; King moved into a West Side slum apartment and faced mobs he said were more hostile than any in Alabama.
Q 25Which landmark law was signed on August 6, 1965, months after the Selma marches?
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act passed Congress within months of the Selma marches; it banned the literacy tests that had long been used to keep Black Southerners from registering.
Q 26The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., sits beside which body of water?
Tidal Basin
The memorial stands on the northwest shore of the Tidal Basin, next to the FDR Memorial, on a sightline between the Jefferson Memorial and the site of King's most famous speech.
Q 27King's doctorate was in which academic field?
Systematic theology
Systematic theology was the field of his 1955 doctorate; a 1991 university inquiry found parts of the dissertation plagiarized but recommended that the degree stand.
Q 28Which magazine named Martin Luther King Jr. its Man of the Year for 1963?
Time
Time made King its Man of the Year for 1963, the first Black American so honored, citing the Birmingham campaign and the March on Washington.
Q 29Which New England writer's essay on refusing to cooperate with unjust laws gripped King as a college freshman?
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau chose jail over paying a tax he thought unjust; King was so moved by the essay that he reread it several times.
Q 30Troopers broke up the first 1965 Selma march after marchers crossed which landmark?
Edmund Pettus Bridge
Marchers had just crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River when troopers charged about 600 of them with batons and tear gas on March 7, 1965, 'Bloody Sunday'.