100 Black History Month Trivia Questions That Will Rearrange What You Think You Know

Carter G. Woodson chose February for a reason most people get wrong. They’ll tell you it’s the shortest month, and they’ll say it with the kind of confidence that means they heard someone else say it first. The real answer is that February already contained the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, both of which Black communities had been celebrating since the late 1800s. Woodson wasn’t picking a month out of a hat. He was building on something that already existed. That’s the kind of detail that separates people who know Black history from people who know the chapter headings.

I’ve run black history month trivia for classrooms, corporate events, church halls, and bar nights where the stakes were nothing more than bragging rights and a free pitcher. The questions that land hardest aren’t always the hardest ones. Sometimes it’s the question that makes a whole table realize they’ve been picturing the wrong decade, or the one that turns a name they’ve heard a hundred times into someone they actually want to know more about. That’s what I tried to build here. A hundred questions with shape to them. Some will feel like layups. Some will make you argue with your phone. The best ones, I hope, will do both.

The Names Everyone Knows (And the Details They Don’t)

1. What was Harriet Tubman’s birth name?

Everyone knows Tubman. Almost nobody knows she was born Araminta Ross and didn’t take the name Harriet until around the time of her marriage to John Tubman. I’ve watched people who consider themselves Tubman experts go completely blank on this one.

 

2. Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in 1955, a 15-year-old girl did the same thing on a Montgomery bus nine months earlier. What was her name?

This is the question that always starts a conversation. Claudette Colvin’s story was deliberately kept out of the spotlight by civil rights leaders at the time because she was a pregnant teenager, and they believed Rosa Parks, a married seamstress and NAACP secretary, would be a more sympathetic figure for a legal challenge. The strategy worked. The cost was Colvin’s place in the popular narrative for decades.

 

3. Martin Luther King Jr. skipped two grades in high school and entered Morehouse College at what age?

People consistently guess 16 or 17. The actual answer is younger than that, and it reframes King as something beyond the marble statue version of him. He was a kid on a college campus.

 

4. What year did Black History Month officially become a nationally recognized, month-long observance in the United States?

This trips up people who know about Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History Week, which started in 1926. The jump from one week to one month took fifty years. Gerald Ford made it official during the nation’s bicentennial, which gives the answer a nice hook.

 

5. Frederick Douglass never knew his exact birthday. What date did he choose to celebrate it?

Douglass picked February 14. Valentine’s Day. His mother had called him “my little valentine” as a child, and he held onto that. It’s one of those answers that lands quietly in a room. People don’t expect tenderness from a question about Douglass.

 

6. Who was the first Black person to earn a PhD from Harvard University?

Most people’s instinct is W.E.B. Du Bois, and their instinct is correct. But the year surprises them.

 

7. What was the name of the organization co-founded by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1909 that still operates today?

This is a gimme for most rooms, but I include it because it’s a confidence builder early in a set. Let people feel good before you pull the rug.

 

8. Malcolm X was assassinated in what New York City venue in 1965?

The name of the building has changed, which is part of what makes this question stick. People who’ve been to the site know it by a different name now.

 

9. What was the original name of the holiday now widely celebrated as Juneteenth?

Juneteenth itself is a portmanteau, but before it became the standard term, the holiday went by several names in Texas and surrounding states. The most common formal name is the one people miss.

 

10. Who wrote the poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often called the Black National Anthem?

The poem was written by one brother and set to music by another. People tend to know it was the Johnson brothers but mix up which one did what.

 

The Ones That Start Arguments

11. What was the first historically Black college or university (HBCU) founded in the United States?

This one causes genuine disputes. The answer depends on how you define “university” versus “institute” and whether you count institutions founded before the Civil War. I’ve seen tables nearly split over it.

 

12. The Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people in which states?

This is the question that catches the most people off guard. The Proclamation didn’t free enslaved people everywhere. It specifically applied to states in rebellion against the Union, meaning enslaved people in border states loyal to the Union were not freed by it. I’ve watched confident history buffs go quiet when they realize they’d been carrying a simplified version of this their whole lives.

 

13. What city was the destination of the Great Migration’s largest wave of Black Americans leaving the South between 1910 and 1970?

People split between New York and Chicago. Both are defensible depending on which wave you’re counting, but one city absorbed more total migrants over the full period.

 

14. The phrase “Black Power” entered mainstream use after being chanted by what civil rights leader during a 1966 march in Mississippi?

Most people attribute it to the Black Panther Party. The phrase predates them by a few months and was popularized by someone whose name doesn’t get said nearly enough.

 

15. In what year did the last known formerly enslaved person in the United States die?

This question does something to a room. People guess the 1910s or 1920s. The real answer collapses the distance between slavery and the present in a way that’s almost physical.

 

16. What was the name of the Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that was destroyed in a 1921 massacre?

This has become more widely known in recent years, but the nickname is what people tend to remember, not the actual neighborhood name.

 

17. How many people are estimated to have been killed in the Tulsa Race Massacre?

The official count and the estimated count are wildly different, and that gap is the whole story.

 

18. What constitutional amendment abolished slavery in the United States?

A breather question. But I’ve been in rooms where someone confidently says the 14th, and then the table has to have a whole conversation about what each Reconstruction amendment actually did.

 

19. Which state was the last to ratify the 13th Amendment?

The answer is more recent than anyone is comfortable with.

 

20. What does the 13th Amendment’s exception clause allow?

This question does real work. Most people have never read the full text of the amendment, and when they hear the answer, the room changes.

 

Science, Medicine, and the Inventions You Think You Know

21. George Washington Carver is famous for his work with peanuts. Did he invent peanut butter?

I love this question because almost everyone’s brain has already filed “Carver = peanut butter” as a fact. It’s one of those things that feels true because it was repeated so often in elementary school. The real story is more interesting.

 

22. Who performed the first successful open-heart surgery in the United States?

The answer is a Black surgeon, and the year will surprise people who assume this kind of surgery is a modern development.

 

23. What did Garrett Morgan patent in 1923 that you probably encountered on your way to wherever you’re reading this?

The phrasing gives people a nudge toward something everyday, and their brains start scanning the room. It’s a good one for getting people to look up from their phones.

 

24. Mae Jemison became the first Black woman in space in 1992 aboard which Space Shuttle?

People who know it was Endeavour sometimes mix it up with other shuttle missions. But the detail I find most interesting is what she brought with her.

 

25. Before becoming a NASA astronaut, Mae Jemison served in what branch of the U.S. government abroad?

People guess the military almost every time. The real answer reveals a different kind of service.

 

26. Who was the first Black American to earn a medical degree?

The year is what gets people. They guess post-Civil War. It was before.

 

27. Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician depicted in “Hidden Figures,” calculated trajectories for which two famous space missions?

Most people get one of them. Getting both is the challenge.

 

28. What common household item’s precursor was patented by Lewis Howard Latimer, who also worked with both Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison?

Latimer is one of those figures who keeps showing up in the footnotes of other people’s fame. He deserves more than a footnote.

 

29. Dr. Charles Drew revolutionized what medical field during World War II, then reportedly resigned from a major organization over its racial policies regarding the very thing he helped develop?

The irony of Drew’s story is almost too pointed to be real. But it is.

 

30. Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were taken without her consent in 1951, contributed to medical breakthroughs through a cell line known by what name?

Her story has become more well known thanks to Rebecca Skloot’s book, but in a trivia setting, the two-syllable answer still catches people who know the story but never learned the scientific designation.

 

Politics, Law, and the Firsts That Came Later Than You Think

31. Who was the first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice?

Most rooms get this without hesitation. It’s the year that makes them pause.

 

32. Before being appointed to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall argued and won what landmark case?

This one people know. But ask them what year it was decided and you’ll see confidence waver.

 

33. Who was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress?

People split between Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan. Both are correct answers to different questions, and the confusion between them is one of my favorite things to watch play out.

 

34. In what year did Shirley Chisholm run for president?

The year matters because of everything else happening in America at the same time.

 

35. Who was the first Black governor of a U.S. state?

This one is harder than it sounds. People guess wrong because they assume it happened earlier than it did, or in a different state.

 

36. Who was the first Black U.S. Senator?

The year of the answer does something to the room every time I ask it.

 

37. After Reconstruction ended, how many years passed before another Black person served in the U.S. Senate?

This is the follow-up that lands the punch. Blanche Bruce left the Senate in 1881. The gap after that tells you everything about what Reconstruction’s end actually meant.

 

38. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law in what year?

A straightforward question that anchors the timeline. People who know their civil rights chronology get it instantly. People who don’t tend to guess earlier than the real answer.

 

39. What event directly prompted the introduction of the Voting Rights Act?

There were many events. But the one that forced the nation’s hand has a name.

 

40. Who was the first Black woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State?

People sometimes mix up the order of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and then forget to account for the gender-specific wording of the question.

 

Culture, Art, and the Moments That Shaped Everything

41. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have begun in what decade?

Straightforward, but people who know a little about it sometimes overshoot the start date. The movement was already in full swing before most people think it started.

 

42. Who wrote “Their Eyes Were Watching God”?

One of the most important novels in American literature, and it was out of print for decades before Alice Walker championed its revival.

 

43. What Langston Hughes poem begins with the line, “What happens to a dream deferred?”

People know the line. They know the poem. But the title trips them up because it’s not what they expect.

 

44. A Lorraine Hansberry play took its title from that same Langston Hughes poem. Name the play.

I like pairing these two questions because the connection between them is itself a piece of Black literary history worth knowing.

 

45. Who was the first Black author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Two names fight for space in people’s heads. One is American, one is Nigerian. The Nigerian author won first, but most Americans guess the American.

 

46. Toni Morrison’s first novel, published in 1970, is called what?

People jump to “Beloved” or “Song of Solomon.” Her actual debut is quieter, and knowing it marks you as someone who’s read beyond the syllabus.

 

47. Who painted “The Migration Series,” a 60-panel depiction of the Great Migration?

This is a question that rewards people who’ve been to museums. The panels are split between two institutions, which is its own kind of story.

 

48. What was the first major motion picture directed by a Black filmmaker to receive the Academy Award for Best Picture?

The phrasing matters here. I’m asking about the director, not just the film. And the answer is more recent than people want it to be.

 

49. Who was the first Black performer to win an Academy Award?

The answer is well known. The category and the year are what people miss, and the role itself tells you a lot about Hollywood in that era.

 

50. Who was the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor?

Sidney Poitier is the instinct, and the instinct is right. But the gap between McDaniel’s win and his tells its own story.

 

Music That Changed the Country

51. What record label, founded in Detroit in 1959, became known as “Hitsville U.S.A.”?

An easy one that lets the room breathe. But the founding story is worth knowing: Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his family to start it.

 

52. What genre of music, originating in Black churches in the early 20th century, heavily influenced the development of rock and roll, soul, and R&B?

Everyone knows the answer is gospel. What they don’t always know is how direct the line is. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was playing distorted electric guitar in the 1940s, a decade before Chuck Berry.

 

53. Often called the “Godmother of Rock and Roll,” this guitarist and singer was shredding electric guitar before most rock legends were born. Name her.

I just mentioned her, but in a live setting these questions wouldn’t be back to back. She deserves her own question regardless.

 

54. What Billie Holiday song, first performed in 1939, is considered one of the earliest protest songs in American popular music?

The song is haunting. The fact that it was written by a white Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx named Abel Meeropol adds a layer that always surprises people.

 

55. What instrument did jazz legend Louis Armstrong play?

A breather. But Armstrong’s influence is so vast that some people actually hesitate, thinking the question must be a trick. It’s not.

 

56. In what year did hip-hop’s founding event, a back-to-school party DJed by DJ Kool Herc, take place in the Bronx?

The birth of hip-hop has a specific date and address. That specificity is part of what makes this question fun. People guess the early ’80s. The real answer is earlier.

 

57. Who was the first Black artist to have a number-one hit on Billboard’s pop chart?

The chart system matters here. People guess wrong because they’re thinking of artists who were popular but whose sales were tracked on separate “race records” charts.

 

58. Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” was written in response to what two events in 1963?

Simone wrote the song in under an hour, in a fury. The two events that triggered it were happening almost simultaneously, and naming both is the challenge.

 

59. What was the first rap song to reach the Billboard Hot 100?

People always guess “Rapper’s Delight” and they’re right. But some people argue for earlier recordings. In terms of charting, there’s a clear answer.

 

60. What Stevie Wonder album, released in 1976, included the song “I Wish” and references to growing up in Saginaw, Michigan?

Stevie Wonder questions are great because his catalog is so deep that even fans second-guess themselves.

 

Sports, and the Weight They Carried

61. Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 playing for which team?

Almost everyone gets this. It’s the questions after this one that do the real work.

 

62. What was Jackie Robinson’s jersey number, which is now retired across all of Major League Baseball?

Another one most people know. But the fact that it’s retired league-wide, not just by the Dodgers, is a distinction worth noting. No other sport has done this for any player.

 

63. Before Jackie Robinson, the Negro Leagues featured some of the greatest baseball players in history. Who is often considered the best pitcher in Negro League history?

Satchel Paige’s name comes up fast, and it should. His career stats are almost mythological because complete records don’t exist for many Negro League games.

 

64. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists on the medal podium. What event had they just competed in?

People remember the image but not the race. And almost nobody remembers the third man on the podium.

 

65. Who was the first Black quarterback to win the Super Bowl?

This happened far more recently than most people assume. The NFL had Black quarterbacks for decades before one won it all.

 

66. What Black boxer refused induction into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, saying, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”?

Everyone knows. But the three-year exile from boxing that followed, during the prime of his career, is the part of the story that doesn’t get told enough.

 

67. Who was the first Black woman to win a Wimbledon singles title?

People split between Althea Gibson and the Williams sisters. The timeline is the tell.

 

68. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In what city was he from?

People guess Alabama because he was born there. But his family moved north during the Great Migration, and the city where he grew up and attended high school is the answer.

 

69. What Black sprinter set a 100-meter world record in 1988 that was stripped due to doping, and whose story became a cautionary tale about performance-enhancing drugs?

This is a tricky inclusion for Black History Month trivia, but Ben Johnson’s story intersects with questions about race, national identity, and how quickly a country can disown its heroes.

 

70. Who became the first Black head coach to win the Super Bowl?

The year of this answer, given how long the NFL has existed, says something about the league’s hiring practices that no statistic could.

 

The Ones That Make You Do Math

71. For how many years was slavery legal in what became the United States (counting from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the passage of the 13th Amendment)?

People don’t do this math on their own. When they do, the number is staggering.

 

72. How many years passed between the end of slavery and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Another math question. The gap between legal freedom and legal equality is the point.

 

73. Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the South, is how old today (or at the time of her death)?

Ruby Bridges is still alive. That fact alone does the work. She was born in 1954 and as of 2024 is 70 years old. School desegregation is not ancient history. It happened within a living person’s childhood.

 

74. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law how many days after President Kennedy’s assassination?

Kennedy introduced the legislation, but it was Lyndon Johnson who pushed it through Congress. The timeline between Kennedy’s death in November 1963 and the signing in July 1964 is about seven and a half months.

 

75. How many enslaved people are estimated to have been transported across the Atlantic during the entire transatlantic slave trade?

People underestimate this number. Consistently and dramatically.

 

The Questions Nobody Expects

76. What popular children’s toy was invented by Lonnie Johnson, a former NASA engineer?

This is one of my favorite Black History Month trivia questions because it plays completely differently than the rest of the set. The room lights up.

 

77. What Black cowboy is believed to have inspired the legend of the Lone Ranger?

The American West was far more diverse than Hollywood ever showed. Bass Reeves’ story is better than any Western ever filmed.

 

78. What percentage of cowboys in the post-Civil War American West are estimated to have been Black?

Following up the Reeves question with this one always gets a reaction. People guess 5% or less.

 

79. What Black explorer is credited with being the first non-Native American to set foot in present-day Arizona and New Mexico?

This predates the Pilgrims by nearly a century. People don’t expect Black history to start this early on the North American continent.

 

80. What Black architect designed the campus plan for Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University)?

People know Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee. They don’t know who designed it.

 

81. What African American newspaper, founded in 1827, is considered the first Black-owned newspaper in the United States?

1827. Before the telegraph, before photography, before the Civil War was even a distant possibility. Black Americans were publishing.

 

82. Who was the first Black billionaire in the United States?

People guess Oprah almost every time. She was the first Black woman billionaire, but not the first Black billionaire overall.

 

83. What was the name of the Black community on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia whose members speak Gullah, a creole language with strong West African roots?

The Gullah Geechee culture is one of the most direct surviving links to West African traditions in the United States, and it’s still living and evolving.

 

84. What Black mathematician and astronomer published an almanac, corresponded with Thomas Jefferson about racial equality, and helped survey the land that became Washington, D.C.?

Benjamin Banneker’s letter to Jefferson is one of the most remarkable documents in American history. He essentially told Jefferson that his words about equality were meaningless as long as he owned slaves.

 

85. What was the name of the network of safe houses and secret routes used by enslaved people to escape to free states and Canada?

Everyone knows this one. I include it because in a mixed room, you need questions that let younger players or people less familiar with American history contribute without feeling left behind.

 

The Modern Era Isn’t as Settled as You Think

86. What year was Barack Obama elected as the 44th President of the United States?

Easy. But I’ve watched people second-guess themselves between 2008 and 2009 because the inauguration was in January 2009. The election was in 2008.

 

87. What was the name of the movement, founded in 2013, that became a global protest movement against police brutality and systemic racism?

The founding year catches people. Most associate it with 2014 or later, but the hashtag and the organization began a year earlier.

 

88. Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court in what year?

Recent enough that people should get it, but the specific year trips up anyone who wasn’t paying close attention to the timeline.

 

89. The phrase “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry after the deaths of two Black men at the hands of police. Name either one.

Both answers are correct. The fact that the same phrase applies to two separate deaths, six years apart, is the point.

 

90. What city saw the largest single-day protest in American history on June 6, 2020?

People guess Minneapolis or New York. The answer reflects how widespread the movement was.

 

91. What executive order did President Biden sign in 2021 to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday?

Trick structure here. It wasn’t an executive order. It was an act of Congress.

 

92. Amanda Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history at whose inauguration?

Her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” became a bestseller before most people had finished watching the ceremony.

 

93. What 2020 documentary about the 13th Amendment, directed by Ava DuVernay, shares its name with the amendment itself?

This actually came out in 2016, not 2020. People misremember the year because of how much attention it received during the 2020 protests. The question is designed to catch that.

 

94. What Pulitzer Prize-winning project, published by The New York Times in 2019, reframed American history by placing the year 1619 and the arrival of enslaved Africans at its center?

Whether you agree with its framing or not, this project reshaped how millions of people think about when American history begins.

 

95. What historically Black sorority, founded in 1908, is the oldest Greek-letter organization established by Black women?

Divine Nine questions always get a reaction. Someone in the room is a member of one of these organizations, and they will not be quiet about it. That’s the fun.

 

The Stretch Run

96. What city is home to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016?

The museum’s location is easy. The fact that it took over 100 years from the first proposal to its opening is the part that lands.

 

97. Who said, “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression”?

People guess King or Douglass. The actual speaker is someone whose name they already know from earlier in this set.

 

98. What was the name of the 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia, the largest and deadliest in U.S. history, which led to even harsher slave codes across the South?

The rebellion’s aftermath, in which the Virginia legislature seriously debated abolishing slavery and then chose instead to double down on it, is one of the great what-ifs in American history.

 

99. Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History,” earned his PhD from what university, becoming only the second Black American to earn a doctorate there?

The first was Du Bois. The second was Woodson. Same institution, two decades apart, both men who spent their lives insisting that Black history was American history.

 

100. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that the greatest obstacle to Black freedom was not the Ku Klux Klan or the White Citizens’ Council, but a different group. Who was he describing?

I save this one for last because it still starts arguments. King’s answer wasn’t who people expect, and it forces a room to sit with an uncomfortable idea. He wrote that the “white moderate” was the greatest stumbling block, the person “who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” That line was written in the margins of a newspaper, in a jail cell, in 1963. And it sounds like it could have been written this morning. That’s the thing about Black history month trivia done right. It’s not about the past. It’s about how short the distance is between then and now, and how much of what we think we’ve settled is still an open question.