African-American History Quiz

Representatives from northern states wanted slaves to be counted fully for determining taxes paid by the states to the federal government. Southern delegates wanted slaves to be counted fully for determining the number of seats that the state would have in congress. The Three-Fifths Compromise gained support from both factions.

Turner was born into slavery in 1800 on a Virginian plantation. While enslaved, he learned to read and write; eventually becoming a religious leader. In 1831, he led an armed uprising that killed approximately 60 people. As a result, Turner and many of his followers were executed.

A Fugitive Slave Law had been in established since 1793; however, it lacked strong enforcement powers. The Compromise of 1850 included a new provision that empowered federal marshals to appoint deputies to detain and return escaped slaves.

Born into slavery in Maryland, Tubman escaped in 1849. She later returned to help relatives and dozens of other slaves reach freedom. During the Civil War, she served as a scout for the Union army and helped liberate more than 750 people from slavery.

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in New York. She escaped with her daughter in 1826, and became a well-known anti-slavery speaker. "Ain't I a Woman?" is the name given to a famous speech she delivered in 1851 at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. During the Civil War, Truth helped in recruiting black soldiers for the Union army.

With the help of abolitionists, Dred Scott, a slave, sued his owner John A. Sandford. Scott claimed that after being taken into a free state, he could sue for his freedom. The US Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in 1856 that Scott could not sue because slaves were not citizens and therefore lacked the rights that are granted through citizenship.

The Emancipation Proclamation redefined the federal legal status of slaves only in designated Confederate areas. The 13th Amendment completely abolished slavery throughout the entire country in 1865.

Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland. He escaped slavery in 1838 and became a preacher and an abolitionist. His oratorical and literary brilliance helped him to become a natural leader during the abolition movement. After the Civil War, Douglass worked for equality for African Americans and women. In 1872 the Equal Rights Party named him as their vice-presidential candidate.

Washington was born into slavery in Virginia in 1856. After emancipation, he attended college at Wayland Seminary and in 1881 he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. Washington called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than directly challenging the segregation and disenfranchisement of blacks in the South. From 1890 to 1915, Washington was a prominent leader in the African-American community.

Ida B. Wells was an African-American journalist in Tennessee. She wrote an exposé about lynchings in the South after several of her friends were murdered by a white mob. She published “Southern Horror” in 1892, and was forced to flee Memphis because of severe negative public reaction to the article.

Homer Plessy, a man with biracial ancestry, refused to give up his seat in a white-only railway car in New Orleans. He was arrested, and his case went to the US Supreme Court in 1896. In a 7–1 ruling, the court upheld established racial segregation laws regarding public facilities stating that its legality stemmed from the idea of "separate but equal."

Carver was born into slavery in 1864. In 1891, he was the first black student to attend the Iowa State Agricultural College. In 1896, Carver was appointed to lead the agriculture department at the Tuskegee Institute. He taught other farmers new farming techniques and urged them to grow alternative crops as a source of food, and as a means to improve their quality of life.

Born in Texas, Joplin eventually moved to Missouri, where he found fame as a ragtime composer during the late 1890s and early 1900s. He was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Du Bois was born in Massachusetts in 1868. He was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard, he taught history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University. In 1900, Du Bois attended the First Pan-African Conference. Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to create bonds of solidarity between all people of African descent. In 1903, he published The Souls of Black Folk, a seminal work in African-American literature. In 1909, he co-founded the NAACP.

The NAACP is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. In its early years, it fought in court to overturn Jim Crow statutes that legalized racial segregation. Its members also lobbied for federal legislation to end lynchings. It currently has about 300,000 members nationwide.

Born in Alabama in 1873, Handy became a musician and a composer. His influence helped spread the genre he helped develop, blues, from a regional musical style with a limited audience to a national force in American music.

Born in Jamaica in 1887, Garvey became a journalist and entrepreneur. He created the Black Star Line, a shipping line, in 1919, which eventually collapsed in 1923. Garvey was convicted of mail fraud, imprisoned, and eventually pardoned by President Coolidge. Garvey encouraged development in Liberia until his death in 1940.

Born in Missouri in 1906, Baker began performing in France in 1925. She became a French citizen and resisted the German occupation during World War II, making notable contributions to the Allied effort. She also contributed to the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s.

Born in Missouri in 1902, Hughes was a poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was an early leader in the new literary art form called jazz poetry, and he wrote dozens of books and plays. He was also the most prominent leader of the Harlem Renaissance — a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that kindled a new black cultural identity. The movement took place in Harlem, New York, between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s.

Born in Alabama in 1913, Owens attended and graduated from Ohio State University. In the 1936 summer Olympics, Owens won gold in the 100 meter sprint, 200 meter sprint, 4 × 100 meter relay, and the long jump.

Fitzgerald was born in Virginia in 1917, and she began singing in New York during the 1930s. She won more than a dozen Grammy awards and continued to perform until 1993.

Born in Georgia in 1919, Robinson broke the color barrier by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Oliver L. Brown sued the Board of Education of Topeka so that his daughter could attend a nearby white school instead of traveling to a more distant segregated black school. The case went to the Supreme Court in 1954. The Court unanimously overturned the “separate but equal” precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Parks became an advocate for equal rights during the 1940s. In 1955, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white person. As a result, she was arrested, and her act of defiance sparked a boycott that eventually forced the city of Montgomery to end segregation in public transportation.

Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in Greensboro on February 1, 1960. The counter was “whites only,” but the four refused to leave. The protest grew each day and the movement soon spread to other Southern cities. Segregation in public accommodations was eventually ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Evers was born in Mississippi in 1925 and went on to serve in the US Army during World War II. He participated in the Civil Rights Movement and was assassinated in 1963. Three trials were required to convict his killer.

Born in Georgia in 1929, King studied theology at Boston University. He became a Baptist minister and then a leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement. King is best known for his role in advancing civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. He also opposed the Vietnam War. He was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

Malcolm X was born in Nebraska in 1925 under the name Malcolm Little. He was sent to prison in 1946 and while imprisoned, he joined the Nation of Islam. He quickly rose to become one of the Nation of Islam's most influential leaders. He advocated for the separation of black and white Americans, and rejected the civil rights movement for its emphasis on integration. He later broke away from the Nation of Islam and was assassinated in 1965 by three members of the organization.

Carmichael became a civil rights activist in 1961 and participated in the Freedom Riders movement, in which activists challenged federal regulations. He became chairman of the SNCC in 1966, and advocated for black power as a means of advancing and establishing black socioeconomic independence. He traveled to Africa in 1969 where he advocated for reform until his death in 1998.

Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in Washington D.C. in 1958. In 1959, they were sentenced to one year in jail for violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. Their case went to the US Supreme Court in 1967. The court unanimously overturned their convictions, and declared the ban to be unconstitutional.

Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale in 1966. The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization. They called upon patrols of armed citizens to monitor the behavior of the police and to challenge police brutality. They also engaged in community social programs which focused on improving the lives of African American children. Newton was murdered in 1989.

Born in Maryland in 1908, Marshall went on to study law at Howard University. He was an attorney for the NAACP and later served as Solicitor General of the US under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He served on the Supreme Court from 1967 to 1991.

Born in Missouri in 1928, Angelou was an author, a poet, and a civil rights activist. In 1969 she published her first autobiography, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which brought her international recognition and acclaim. She recited one of her poems at Bill Clinton's first inauguration and she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

Morrison was born in 1931 in Ohio. She studied at Howard University and Columbia University. Her novel, Beloved, won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and in 1993, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born in South Carolina in 1941, Jackson eventually became a civil rights activist, a Baptist minister, and a politician. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and 1988; he served as a shadow Senator for Washington D.C. from 1991 to 1997.