Black History Month Trivia

Black History Month takes place in February in part to honor the birthday of which famous abolitionist and civil rights leader, who escaped slavery in 1838?

• Harriet Tubman

• Sojourner Truth

• Phillis Wheatley

• Frederick Douglass

Which boxing legend, who famously said “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War in the 1960s?

• Jack Johnson

• Muhammad Ali

• Joe Louis

• Floyd Mayweather

Tamla Records was the original name of which Detroit-based record label founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in 1959?

• Empire

• Atlantic

• Motown

• Capitol

Which civil rights organization, founded in 1909 by a group including W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells, has won many key legal battles and was instrumental to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

• Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Who is the first African American to win an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards)?

• John Legend

• James Earl Jones

• Whoopi Goldberg

• Harry Belafonte

Which group, founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in 1966, outlined its goals in a “10-point program”, and did work like monitoring police activity in Black neighborhoods and providing free meals for children in Black communities?

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

• Black Panther Party

• African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church

• Black Lives Matter

Which mathematician pioneered research to determine ways to track space missions, and performed calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee that were critical to the success of the first U.S. crewed spaceflights? (Hint: They were in the movie "Hidden Figures")

• Francis Butler

• Otis Boykin

• George Washington Carver

• Katherine Johnson

Which singer and jazz pianist was the first Black male entertainer to have a variety show on national TV in 1956?

• Louis Armstrong

• Nat King Cole

• Duke Ellington

• Harry Belafonte

Which TV miniseries depicting the story of author Alex Haley’s ancestry set a record for the most-watched television show in U.S. history when it’s final installment aired on January 30, 1977?

• Roots

• A Raisin in the Sun

• Amistad

• Glory

Which self-taught astronomer predicted the eclipse of the sun in 1789, is credited with helping design the blueprint for Washington DC, and published his own Almanac, which he sent to Thomas Jefferson?

• Solomon Northup

• Henry Blair

• David Ruggles

• Benjamin Banneker