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Understanding African American History and Culture

This quiz tests knowledge on significant events, terms, and figures in African American history and culture, providing insights into the contributions and experiences of African Americans throughout history.

#African American History #Civil Rights #American Politics #Cultural Studies #Social Justice

1 During the 1770s Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious English colonists secure American Independence by defeating the British in the ________.

2 It became known as the ________, meaning that a single drop of "black blood" made a person "black".

3 [35][37] Pentecostals are mainly part of the ________.

4 In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African American vote compared to 11% for Republican ________.

5 On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator ________ defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected President of the United States.

6 For example, 55% of European Americans classify President ________ as biracial when they are told that he has a white mother, while 66% of African Americans consider him black.

7 [3] As an adjective, the term is usually spelled ________.

8 By 1969, ________ as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans.

9 The ________ between 1954 to 1968 was directed at abolishing racial discrimination against African Americans, particularly in the Southern United States.

10 [114] The current life expectancy of African Americans as a group is comparable to those of other groups who live in countries with a high ________.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • in 1987, American blues pianist Whistlin' Alex Moore became the first African American Texan to be awarded the National Heritage Fellowship.
  • in 2007, Arlene Holt Baker became the first African American AFL-CIO officer.
  • in 1979, Joseph C. Howard, Sr., whose mother was Sioux and father was African American, became the first African American named to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.
  • in 1955, black promoter Thurman Ruth booked the Selah Jubilee Singers, to perform in a music venue, New York's Apollo Theater, the first gospel group to play commercially.
  • in 1947, Thelma Dewitty became not just the first African American hired to teach in the Seattle Public Schools, but one of the first married women as well.
  • in 1878, Sam Lucas became the first African American actor to play the role of Uncle Tom in a serious production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, only to do the same for film 37 years later.
  • in 1922, Washington & Jefferson College's Charlie "Pruner" West became the first African American to play quarterback in the Rose Bowl.
  • pioneering African American aviator Hubert Julian was an associate producer for the 1940 race film The Notorious Elinor Lee.
  • over 5,000 Rosenwald Schools in the United States were built primarily for the education of African Americans with funds donated by Julius Rosenwald, who was part-owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company.
  • one of the works of Maya Angelou, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first film to be written and produced by an African American woman.
  • in the 1880s Billy Kersands was the most popular African American comedian in the United States.
  • in 1941 the United States Naval Academy refused to play a lacrosse game against Harvard University because Harvard's team included a black player.
  • in 1862, Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas proposed the colony of Linconia to fulfill U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's vision for African-American emigration to Central America.
  • The City Sun, a black-owned newspaper, told David Dinkins, New York City's first African American mayor, that he was "beginning to look like a wimp".
  • Kanawha (pictured) was a steam-powered luxury yacht aboard which industrialist Henry H. Rogers met Booker T. Washington to secretly fund the education of African Americans.
  • BodyLove is an Alabama-based radio soap opera that uses drama to reach African American listeners with messages that promote diabetes awareness and healthy lifestyles.
  • A Bayou Legend by William Grant Still was the first opera composed by an African American to be broadcast on television.
  • The Exile, the first African American talking film, was a semi-autobiographical film about a Black rancher in South Dakota, with elements of interracial romance and some nightclub scenes set in Chicago.
  • a cave in Okinawa is called the Cave of the Negroes because three apparently African American US Marines were killed by villagers and their bodies dumped in the cave.
  • comedian Bob Hope, U.S. President Gerald Ford and, according to the Washington Post, every great African American professional golfer except Tiger Woods have played at Langston Golf Course.
  • after an ultimatum by the Chicago White Stockings to pull his African American players from the active roster, baseball manager Charlie Morton put Moses Fleetwood Walker back on despite having given him time off for injuries.
  • after Milt Davis was rejected by the Detroit Lions because they did not have a black roommate for him, Davis won two championships in four seasons with the Baltimore Colts.
  • a young black aspiring actor by the name of James Earl Jones had his beginnings at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan.
  • pioneering African American journalist Larry Whiteside was part of an expert panel that chose the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
  • the 1935 Disney cartoon Three Orphan Kittens was later censored for having negative portrayals of African Americans.
  • the popular Chinese TV talent show contestant Lou Jing, dubbed the "Black Pearl", is of Chinese and African American heritage.
  • the last African American jockey to win the Kentucky Derby was James Winkfield in 1902.
  • the first African American to see the Great Falls of the Missouri River was York, a slave who participated in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
  • the early homophile organization NACHO adopted the slogan "Gay is Good", modeled on the African American slogan "Black is Beautiful".
  • the title of the 1944 race film Go Down Death derives from a poem by the African American writer James Weldon Johnson.
  • two white supremacists allegedly plotted to assassinate Senator Barack Obama as part of a supposed plan to murder more than 100 African Americans in Tennessee.
  • when Nizah Morris, an African American transgender woman, was murdered, the medical examiner immediately labeled it a homicide, but the Philadelphia police took over a month to do so.
  • when African American golfers attempted to play at Washington, D.C.'s racially segregated East Potomac Park Golf Course in 1941, angry whites threw stones and threatened them with violence.
  • violence in the 1970 Koza riot against US military presence in Okinawa was directed specifically against white servicemen, while care was taken to avoid attacking black MPs.
  • under Pigford v. Glickman, the United States government paid nearly US$1 billion to African American farmers to compensate for 1980s and 1990s racial discrimination.
  • the race movie, a genre of films produced for black audiences and featuring black casts, was very popular among African Americans in the United States between 1915 and 1945.
  • the Pea Island Life-Saving Station (pictured) on the Outer Banks of North Carolina was the first station of the United States Life-Saving Service to be staffed entirely by an African American crew.
  • the American photographer Arthur Rothstein is famous mostly for his photographs of Gee's Bend in Alabama, a poor African American tenant community.
  • the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver, (pictured) the second named for an African American, was sponsored by singer Lena Horne and constructed in 42 days from start to delivery.
  • the sports arena Wesley Brown Field House at the United States Naval Academy is named after Wesley A. Brown, the first African American to graduate from the academy.
  • the 1927 silent film The Scar of Shame is an early example of a "race movie," in which a feature film was made by a black cast exclusively for black audiences.
  • the ANAK Society, Georgia Tech's oldest secret society, claims to have covertly protected the university's first African American students during Georgia Tech's racial integration in the 1960s.
  • the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic is the largest African American parade in the United States.
  • the Holiday Bowl in Los Angeles was a popular gathering place for the Nikkei community and African Americans, with the coffee shop serving grits, udon, chow mein, and hamburgers.
  • the Goffe Street Special School for Colored Children was built in 1864 to provide educational opportunities for African American children in New Haven, Connecticut.
  • the Edmonson sisters (pictured) were African American slaves who tried to escape to freedom and became celebrity abolitionists.
  • the Colored Soldiers Monument in Frankfort, Kentucky is the only one dedicated to Black Union soldiers in Kentucky.
  • William H. Hastie was the first African American to be appointed judge of a Federal District court (of the Virgin Islands); to be appointed to a U.S. Court of Appeals (Third Circuit); and to be Governor of the Virgin Islands.
  • Washington Park Subdivision land owners signed 20-year restrictive covenants excluding renting to African Americans, leading to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee.
  • Chase Austin was the first African American racecar driver to race in the NASCAR Busch Series.
  • Charles Moir's first recruit as Roanoke College's basketball coach was Frankie Allen, who would eventually succeed Moir as head coach of Virginia Tech and become the school's first African American head coach.
  • Charles Hicks played a key role in the formation of Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels, the first successful blackface minstrel troupe composed of all African American performers.
  • Black Bike Week is the largest African American motorcycle rally in the US.
  • Cisero Murphy was the first African American professional pocket billiards player to ever win a World or U.S. National billiard title.
  • Clarence W. Wigington, the first African American municipal architect, designed four buildings in two cities that are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
  • Eugene Antonio Marino became the first African American Catholic archbishop in the United States in 1988.
  • Elsie B. Washington was called the "mother of the African-American romance" for her 1980 novel, considered the first to feature African American characters by an African American author.
  • Dorothy Lavinia Brown (pictured) was the first African American female surgeon in the Southeastern United States and also first African American woman to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly.
  • Dennis Franklin was the first African American quarterback for the Michigan Wolverines football team.
  • Alysa Stanton is the first African American female rabbi.
  • Alvin Greene is the first African American since Reconstruction to win a major party's nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina.
  • African American singer Cora Green performed the Yiddish tune Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen in the 1938 race film Swing!.
  • African American civil rights activist Mel Boozer was the first openly gay person nominated for the office of Vice President of the United States.
  • African American artist James W. Washington, Jr. first gained visibility in 1938 working with the WPA in his native Mississippi, but was later associated with the Northwest School.
  • African American actor Lorenzo Tucker, the star of the 1932 race film Veiled Aristocrats, was dubbed the "black Valentino" because of his striking good looks.
  • black Baptist minister and former slave R. H. Boyd had so much success in religious publishing that it caused a split in his denomination.
  • center George Gregory led the Columbia Lions in 1930–31 to its first title in what was to become the Ivy League, and was later named as the first African American All-American basketball player.
  • Alliance for Labor Action launched a $4 million organizing drive targeting African American workers in Atlanta, Georgia, in the fall of 1969.
  • 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, site of the 1963 church bombing, was designed in 1911 by noted African American architect Wallace Rayfield.
  • Rear Admiral Evelyn J. Fields is the first woman and first African American to be the director of the Office of NOAA Corps Operations and the NOAA Commissioned Corps.
  • Louisiana Judge Kernan "Skip" Hand was overruled in 2008 by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the exclusion of two blacks as jurors in a high-profile murder case.
  • George E. Johnson, Sr., who was born in a Mississippi shack and dropped out of high school, founded the first Black-owned company ever traded on the American Stock Exchange.
  • George W. Woodbey was the sole African American delegate to the Socialist Party of America conventions in 1904 and 1908.
  • Richard Arrington, the first African American mayor of Birmingham, Alabama has a doctorate in zoology.
  • Rajo Jack, one of the first African-American racecar drivers, pretended to be Portuguese to avoid racism.
  • Paula Dow, the New Jersey Attorney General, is the first African American woman to serve that post in the state's history.
  • Nkiru Books, the oldest African American bookstore in Brooklyn, was saved from being closed down by rappers Mos Def and Talib Kweli in 2000.
  • Rommie Loudd was the first African American majority owner of a major league sports team.
  • Roseland Christian School (pictured) changed from a completely Dutch-American student body in 1884 to a completely African American one by the mid 1980s.
  • Walter G. Alexander was the first African American to serve in the New Jersey General Assembly.
  • Victoria Jackson-Stanley recently became the first woman and first African American mayor of Cambridge, a Maryland town devastated by race riots in the 1960s.
  • Terrance Carroll, the grandson of a sharecropper, is slated to become the first African American ever to serve as Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives.
  • Sherman Maxwell, who is believed to be the first African American sportscaster, was rarely paid for his radio broadcasts.
  • Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton was the first African American to sign a contract to play in the National Basketball Association.
  • Nat Williams is the first ever African American sheriff elected in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, where the last three elected sheriffs had been sent to jail.
  • Jane Edna Hunter, an African American social worker in Cleveland, Ohio, was born on the Woodburn Plantation (pictured) in Pendleton, South Carolina.
  • James McClinton was the first African American mayor of Topeka, Kansas, appointed by the city council in December 2003, but that the electorate of the city passed a referendum the following year to strip the office of political power.
  • James A. Bland (1854-1911) an African American musician and song writer wrote over 700 songs, including "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" in 1878, which was later the official State Song of Virginia from 1940 to 1997.
  • Herman Farr, an African American clergyman from Shreveport, Louisiana, single-handedly desegregated the historic Strand Theatre during the heyday of the civil rights movement.
  • John Henry Turpin, who survived the catastrophic explosions of USS Maine in 1898 and USS Bennington in 1905, was one of the first African American Chief Petty Officers of the United States Navy.
  • Joseph Rainey became the first black person to serve in the United States House of Representatives on December 12, 1870.
  • Lott Cary was an African American slave who became educated, bought his freedom, became a minister and physician, and helped found the Colony of Liberia in Africa in 1822.
  • Lewis Adams, a former African American slave in Macon County, Alabama is known for helping found the normal school which later became Tuskegee University.
  • Leon "Pee Wee" Whittaker, an African American trombonist from the Mississippi River delta country, played at least five instruments in a 74-year musical career.
  • Joshua Packwood is the first white man to graduate as valedictorian of the all-male HBCU, Morehouse College, an overwhelmingly African American university in Atlanta, Georgia.
  • African American economist Abram Lincoln Harris was a four-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in economics.
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