History
John P. Parker, a foundryman and inventor, and Samuel Burris, who worked as a farmer and teacher, also held the same clandestine position as what famous Union Army cook and nurse? Name both the person and the role all three shared.
Harriet Tubman, Underground Railroad conductor
One of Bob Marley’s most well known songs honors what group of African American soldiers who fought on the Western Frontier in segregated regiments fighting in the American-Indian wars. They captured cattle thieves and served as park rangers all while “fighting for survival”.
Buffalo Soldiers
American Filmmaker George Lucas wanted to make this rapper a Jedi in his upcoming Star Wars films. Unfortunately, despite his excitement for the roll, this rapper/ actor died before having the chance to make it into the 1999 movie. Who is that rapper/actor?
Tupac Shakur
“Now, Pheoby, don’t feel too mean wid de rest of em ‘cause dey’s parched up from not knowin’ things. Dem meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh make out they’s alive.” Characters like Janie in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (from which this dialogue is taken), Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, among many other novels, speak in what dialect of American English characterized by its own distinct accents, intonation, grammar and vocabulary?
AAVE or African American Vernacular English
In 2014 this athlete became made headlines and famously became the first female starting pitcher to win a game in the Little League World Series
Mo'ne Davis
"When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful / and terrible thing," Robert Hayden prophesied, the subject of his poem "shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric, / not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, / but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives / fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing." Who is the abolitionist writer and orator whose name is the title of Hayden’s poem?
Frederick Douglass
While attending Grambling State University in 1989 this artist honed her passion for music. Eventually she'd be hailed as the "Queen of Neo Soul" and release the first neo-soul single to top Billboard's R&B chart with her single "On & On". Who is this artist?
Erykah Badu
Before being known by the world for their stand-up comedy, this African American was a singer who opened for people like Bob Dylan and Nina Simone. Nina Simone reflected that singing made this person so nervous they "shook like he had malaria." What is their name?
Richard Pryor
Comic-book hero Black Panther, hip-hop duo Soul Science Lab, science fiction author Octavia Butler, computer music professor King James Britt’s UC-San Diego course Blacktronika, and the sound art archive project Echolocution are just a few examples of works and artists associated with what movement, an “aesthetic and practice where music, visual arts, science fiction, and technology intersect to imagine alternate realities and a liberated future viewed through the lens of Black cultures”?
Afrofuturism
After a playing career with the LA Dodgers and Oakland Athletics, this Black man became the first MLB player to come out as gay. Who is this athlete?
Glenn Burke
Which U.S. state prohibited slavery, but also passed exclusion laws that specified punishments, including whipping and public labor, for Black people who tried to settle there? The 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1866 nullified the exclusion clause with which the state was admitted to the Union; the state officially repealed its own clause in 1926; and residents voted to remove historical racial references in the state Constitution in 2002.
Oregon
What album by what artist was released in 1996 featuring mafioso rap themes and gritty lyrics about the "hustler" lifestyle and material obsessions? Lyrics like “I'd rather die enormous than live dormant, that's how we on it” put this album on BillBoard’s top 200 for 18 weeks and promoted 4 different singles. It is now widely considered one of the greatest rap albums of all time.
Reasonable Doubt - Jay - Z
In the Netflix drama Self Made, Octavia Spencer portrayed what inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, who created the first commercial line of Black hair care products in the US, hiring thousands of women as door-to-door representatives to sell her products?
Madam C. J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove)
“He’s the Nelson Mandela of couture, the Kofi Annan of what you got on,” said will.i.am, describing what late editor and media personality who was the first Black man to hold the position of creative director at Vogue magazine?
André Leon Talley
Pittsburgh Pirates
LGBTQ+ legal scholar, human rights activist, and author Pauli Murray became the first Black and multiracial woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest in 1977 (the first year women were ordained). In 1965, she was also the first African American to earn the JD degree from the law school of which American university? In 2016, this university named one of its two new residential colleges after Murray (the other was named after Benjamin Franklin).
Yale University
Because his work has been sampled by Salt-n-Pepa (“My Desire”), NWA (“Straight Outta Compton”), Tyler the Creator (“Pigs”), Janet Jackson, David Bowie, Oasis, Jay-Z, Skrillex, and thousands more, Gregory Coleman has been called “one of the most influential Black musicians you’ve never heard of” for his creation and performance of one of the most widely-sampled drum breaks of all time in the middle of what song by what musical group?
“Amen, Brother” by The Winstons
Dr. Mae Jemison, a physician and former Peace Corps volunteer, made history in 1992 as the first African American woman in space when she served as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Endeavour. She is also a part of television history as the first real astronaut to appear on what television show? (The exact, unambiguous title of the TV show is required.)
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Founded by Leon Washington, Jr., in 1933, the Los Angeles Sentinel is one of the oldest newspapers published for an African-American community in the Western US. For the last 16 years, the paper has sponsored what annual October street festival celebrating Black food, music, and culture–at over 350,000 attendees, the largest one-day festival in Los Angeles?
Taste of Soul
As a standout runner from Wisconsin, this athlete became the first Black American to win an Olympic medal. Winning Bronze in both the 200 and 400 meter hurdles. Who is this athlete?
George Poage
You’ve probably heard of the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought valiantly in World War II despite segregation and racism at home. You may also be familiar with the 442nd Infantry Regiment, a group of second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei), many of whose families were incarcerated at internment camps while they risked their lives to become the most-decorated regiment in US military history. Sometimes mentioned alongside these two notable groups is what only battalion, comprised entirely of Black women, that served overseas during WWII? Give either its full name or the nickname by which it was known.
6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion
or
the Six Triple Eight
or
the 6888
By 1530, enslaved West Africans made up over half the population in the Spanish territory of Puerto Rico. What traditional Puerto Rican dance and music genre, originating in West Africa, emphasizes a dynamic relationship among dancers, percussionists and singers? Ricky Martin’s song titled for this genre includes one of its traditional rhythms.
Bomba
In the HBO movie Something the Lord Made, Mos Def played Vivien Thomas, a Black laboratory supervisor at Johns Hopkins University who, in the 1940s, played a key role in developing a groundbreaking procedure to treat cyanotic heart disease in infants–a condition more commonly known as what?
Blue baby syndrome
“I understand the burden and the weight of being the first,” this writer, director, and producer told Variety in 2019. “The first young person to write a memoir about transitioning. The first in my family to get a college degree and then a master’s degree…the first trans woman of color to direct and write an episode of television. And now, the first to have a bankable, sizable deal that will enable me to be empowered to tell my communities’ stories. To tell my stories.” Who is this creator, who signed her deal with Netflix in 2019?
Janet Mock
“After twelve years in the Major Leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes”: What Black baseball player challenged the reserve clause in an unsuccessful lawsuit against MLB, but helped usher in the era of free agency?
Curt Flood