Black Innovators in STEM
Who was the first African American woman in space?
Dr. Mae Jemison
What organ produces insulin?
Pancreas
What is the most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere?
Nitrogen
Who developed over 300 uses for peanuts?
George Washington Carver
What landmark case led to the desegregation of public schools in the U.S.?
A) Brown v. Board of Education
B) Plessy v. Ferguson
C) Dred Scott v. Sandford
D) Loving v. Virginia
A) Brown v. Board of Education
What pioneering Black surgeon performed one of the first successful open-heart surgeries in 1893?
A) Rebecca Lee Crumpler
B) Charles Drew
C) James McCune Smith
D) Daniel Hale Williams
D) Daniel Hale Williams
What is the longest bone in the human body?
Femur
What scientific principle is the 1st Law of Thermodynamics?
A) Newton’s Third Law
B) The Law of Conservation of Energy
C) The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
D) Pascal’s Principle
B) The Law of Conservation of Energy
Who was the first African American to receive a PhD in any science?
Edward Bouchet (Physics, Yale, 1876)
Who was the first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice?
Thurgood Marshall
Who was the first Black astronaut to travel into space?
Guion Bluford
What year did the U.S. government officially recognize sickle cell anemia as a public health concern?
A) 1954
B) 1972
C) 1990
D) 2001
B) 1972
What year did Pluto get reclassified as a dwarf planet?
2006
What unethical medical experiment, running from 1932 to 1972, withheld treatment from Black men suffering from syphilis to study the disease’s effects?
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
What African empire was one of the wealthiest in history, ruled by Mansa Musa?
A) Mali Empire
B) Songhai Empire
C) Ghana Empire
D) Nubian Kingdom
A) Mali Empire
Who was the first Black woman to earn a PhD in chemistry in the U.S.?
Marie Maynard Daly
What major medical discovery resulted from the study of Henrietta Lacks' cells?
The HeLa cell line, crucial for polio vaccines and cancer research
What was the first successful U.S. satellite?
A) Apollo 11
B) Sputnik
C) Explorer 1
D) Voyager 1
C) Explorer 1
Who was the first African American woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S.?
A) Rebecca Lee Crumpler
B) Jane Cooke Wright
C) Alexa Canady
D) Joycelyn Elders
A) Rebecca Lee Crumpler
Who was the first Black woman elected to Congress?
Shirley Chisholm
Who developed the first large-scale blood bank?
A) Percy Julian
B) Daniel Hale Williams
C) Dr. Charles Drew
D) James McCune Smith
C) Dr. Charles Drew
What unethical medical practice involved the forced sterilization of Black women in the U.S. during the 20th century, often without their knowledge or consent?
The Mississippi Appendectomy
What groundbreaking device did Otis Boykin develop, which is still used in pacemakers today?
A) The pacemaker control unit
B) The electrical resistor
C) The cochlear implant
D) The heart-lung machine
B) The electrical resistor
Who are known as the "Mothers of Gynecology" for their contributions to medical knowledge, despite enduring unethical experimentation without anesthesia due to the false belief that they "could not feel pain"?
A) Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey
B) Henrietta Lacks and Sarah Baartman
C) Mary Eliza Mahoney and Rebecca Lee Crumpler
D) Fannie Lou Hamer and Dorothy Brown
A) Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey
What event led to the founding of the NAACP in 1909?
The 1908 Springfield Race Riot