AAE: Important Dates In History Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Which person was born in Massachusetts, was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D from Harvard and wrote 'Souls of Black Folk'?

Answer: W.E.B. DuBois

He also helped found the NAACP, along with Ida B. Wells, in 1911. He advocated the idea of the 'Talented Tenth' and believed that social and political equality was more important than economic equality.

2. Which Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery?

Answer: 13th

The Amendment was passed in 1865, after the end of the Civil War.

3. What year did the 'Zoot Suit Riots' take place?

Answer: 1943

Los Angeles erupted in a conflict between Mexicans or Mexican-Americans and white Americans.

4. The first draft was instituted for the Vietnam war.

Answer: False

Drafts were used in these wars: the American Revolutionary War, U.S. Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. T

The Selective Service Act was passed for World War II in 1940. Men 21 to 35 were required to serve in the military for at least one year.

5. Which Executive Order ended segregation in the military?

Answer: 9981

Passed in 1948, after blacks proved more than fully capable during the Second World War. Executive Order 9066, authorized the movement of Japanese-Americans to the interior of the country, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Executive Order 8802 barred discrimination in defense agencies and work training. To make sure things were kept up to par the Fair Employment Practices Committee was formed, but they were unable to do much. Workers were afraid to bring cases before the FEPC and the FEPC could only make 'suggestions.'

6. What year was the 14th Amendment to the Constitution passed? Do you know what it said (no need to answer, I'll tell you)?

Answer: 1868

The second of the Reconstruction Amendments. It said that 'no state shall deny citizens equal protection of the laws.' Unfortunately, the vauge language of the document gave the Supreme Court enough leeway to rule on the doctrine of 'separate but equal' in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, determined in 1896.

7. Who gave a speech entitled, 'What to the slave is the 4th of July?'?

Answer: Fredrick Douglass

It was some pretty gutsy stuff to be given at a banquet.

8. Which person was born a slave in Mississippi, attended Fisk University and wrote 'The Red Record'?

Answer: Ida B. Wells

'The Red Record' was an anti-lynching pamphlet printed in 1895. Because her ideas were so controversial in the southern town where she lived, she was forced to leave. She sat in a 'whites only' train car and was forced off, decades before Rosa Parks' refusal to get up to allow a white man to sit ALONE on a bus seat. She helped found the NAACP, with W.E.B. DuBois in 1911.

9. What rising Black Panther leader was killed by Chicago police in 1969?

Answer: Fred Hampton

The police raided his apartment in the middle of the night, killed one man who was in the living room then headed to the bedroom to fill Fred literally full of lead. He was lying in bed next to his pregnant girlfriend. How sick is that? A Chicago museum had the mattress he was killed on in storage for several years, but it began to decompose, and they had to throw it out.

10. Which woman held the highest postion in the Black Panther Party?

Answer: Elaine Brown

She was head of the B.P.P. while Huey Newton was in exile in Cuba. For an interesting read, and to learn a LOT more about her, check out her autobiography: 'A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Tale.'

11. Which person was born a slave in Virginia, attended Hampton University, founded the Tuskegee Institute and gave the 'Atlanta Compromise' speech?

Answer: Booker T. Washington

He favored industrial education and supported gaining economic and occupational equality, before political equality.

12. What year was the landmark Brown v. Kansas Board of Education case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court?

Answer: 1954

It said that segregation of schools was unconstitutional. Not much happened to desegregate schools for several years, the most pivotal and tense experience being that of the Little Rock Nine when Eisenhower called in the Federal Troops to make sure the nine got to school safely.

13. When was the first mention of having a march on Washington, D.C., made?

Answer: 1941

A. Philip Randolph organized a 'March on Washington Movement.' The march was never actually carried out because President Roosevelt agreed to one of Randolph's demands days before the march was schedueled. Roosevelt issued EO 8802, which ended discrimination in the defense industry. After Roosevelt's death, Truman issued EO 9981, which essentially ended discrimination in the military.

14. Which person was a U.U. minister who decided to try peacefully protesting with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but was killed for his efforts?

Answer: James Reeb

He was attacked when coming out of a restaurant that served blacks and was friendly to supportive whites. Olsen and Miller were two other Reverends who came to Selma, Alabama, to protest as well. Reeb was attacked and suffered from a blood clot in his brain.

He was taken by his companions to the S.C.L.C. office, and they were then unable to find an ambulance that would be willing to take Reeb, a white sympathetic to the cause of the black Southerners, to Birmingham for the surgery he required. Dr. King held a vigil for Reeb until he died, the following day. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, huh? It reminds me, though, what's important to me as a Unitarian Universalist (U.U.).

15. Which amendment permitted black men over 21 to vote?

Answer: 15th

Passed in 1870. Blacks, however couldn't truly vote freely. Intimidation tactics, as well as five barriers to voting, kept most of the black population (especially in the South) from voting until the 1960s. That's part of what Freedom Summer was all about.

The five barriers to voting were: a poll tax, a literacy test, the grandfather clause (if a man's grandfather were free before the Civil War, he was exempt from the literacy test), a property tax, and white primary elections (blacks were then stuck with candidates they didn't like--just pick the lesser of two evils).

16. Where was Malcom X killed in 1965?

Answer: Audubon Ballroom

By one of the followers of Elijah Muhammed.

17. What year did 'Red Summer' take place?

Answer: 1919

It started in Chicago at a beach. The anger was fueled by the Great Migration, which began in 1915. White troops began coming home from the war to discover that blacks had moved up from the South to take jobs in Northern cities.

18. The movie 'Ghosts of Mississippi' was based on the murder of which black civil rights leader?

Answer: Medgar Evers

Starring Whoopi Goldberg, Alec Bladwin, and James Woods (as the bad guy).

19. Which of the following women was denied the right to sing the national anthem at Constitution Hall?

Answer: Marian Anderson

She was banned by the Daughters of the American Revolution! In 1939.

20. Lastly, an easy one. Who gave the famous 'I Have a Dream' speech?

Answer: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Come on . . . Quite a good speech if you read the whole thing. There's a lot of substance to it.

Source: Author Boru2537

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Instead of studying for my Physics final, I thought I would create a quiz using important dates from my African American Experience class. The dates on this quiz relate to African-American history. At least according to my teacher! Good luck!

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