Life at the Intersection
Black Music, Art, & Entertainment
Black History & Culture
Firsts in Black History
Black USC History
100

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist wrote The Color Purple, centering Black women’s lives, love, and resilience.

Who is Alice Walker?

100

This 1991 film, directed by John Singleton, follows a young man named Tre growing up in South Central Los Angeles.

What is Boyz n the Hood?

100

This Compton-born activist co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966. 

Who is Bobby Seale?

100

This person was the first Black person to play Major League Baseball after Black people were specifically excluded from Major League Baseball.

Who is Jackie Robinson?

100

This USC organization, founded during the Civil Rights Movement, has long served as an advocacy and community-building space for Black students.

What is the Black Student Assembly (BSA)?

200

This 1969 uprising at a New York City bar became a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history, with Black and Latina trans women playing key roles.

What is the Stonewall Uprising?

200

This album topped Apple Music’s Top 100 Albums list released in 2024.

What is The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill?

200

This South LA neighborhood has become a center for anti-gentrification activism and Black cultural preservation.

What is Leimert Park?

200

This person was the first Black person to win a Grammy.

Who is Ella Fitzgerald?

200

This USC Alumnus won the Heisman Trophy in 1968 and later became a prime suspect in a murder case. (Khloé Kardashian's father allegedly...)

Who is OJ Simpson?

300

This public health crisis disproportionately impacted Black gay and bisexual men and led to activism that reshaped both LGBTQ+ rights and modern healthcare advocacy.

What is the HIV/AIDS epidemic?

300

This 2016 coming-of-age film about a young Black man in Miami won the Academy Award for Best Picture after a historic envelope mix-up.

What is Moonlight?

300

This Los Angeles neighborhood became the heart of Black entertainment and jazz in the early 20th century. 

What is Central Avenue?

300

Founded in 1868, this institution was the first medical school in the United States established specifically to educate Black physicians.

What is Howard University College of Medicine?

300

This person was the first African-American to graduate from the USC School of Dentistry. 

Who is John A. Somerville?

400

Beyoncé’s 2022 album Renaissance opens its lead single, “Break My Soul,” with vocals from this self-proclaimed “Queen of Bounce.”

Who is Big Freedia?

400

This writer authored over 40 works, including Giovanni’s Room, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Go Tell it to the Mountains, among others.

Who is James Baldwin?

400

This LA mayor, elected in 2022, is the first Black woman to lead the city.

Who is Karen Bass?

400

This world-renowned surgeon and "Father of the Blood Bank" helped save countless lives during WWII, but famously resigned from his post after the government insisted on segregating the blood of Black and white donors.

Who is Dr. Charles Drew?

400

This person was the first African-American President of USC. 

Who is Wanda Austin? 

(Interim President in 2018, also first femal Presidentt)

500

Founded in 1973, this organization was one of the first to focus specifically on the needs of Black feminists and lesbians and laid the groundwork for what we now refer to as “intersectionality.”

What is the Combahee River Collective?

500

Kendrick Lamar’s “Poetic Justice” featuring Drake references a 1993 film and samples a 1990 R&B hit; name the song and the artist being sampled.

What is “Any Time, Any Place” by Janet Jackson?

500

This historic Black LA newspaper, founded in 1933, is still published today.

What is the Los Angeles Sentinel?

500

Who was the first Black person to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for negotiating the 1949 Armistice Agreements?

Who is Ralph Bunche?

500

In 1972, USC running back Sam Cunningham dominated this all-white Southern team in a game often credited with accelerating integration in college football. 

Who is the University of Alabama?

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