Giants Among US
Moments in History
Stage, Screen & Stadiums
Cultural Capital
HBS Should Know This
100

During a time when enslaved people risked brutal punishment or death for escaping, this woman led more than 70 people to freedom through the Underground Railroad.

Who is Harriet Tubman?

100

Despite the Emancipation Proclamation being signed in 1863, enslaved people in Texas did not learn of their freedom until Union troops arrived two years later, which is now commemorated as this holiday.

What is Juneteenth?

100

This genre, born in the Bronx in the 1970s, is now the most globally consumed music style in the world.

What is hip-hop?

100

This 1920s cultural movement centered in New York City reshaped Black literature, music, and identity.

What is the Harlem Renaissance?

100

As a form of reparations, formerly enslaved people were widely told they would receive this, although most never did.

What is 40 acres and a mule?

200

Nearly a century after the court denied Black Americans basic legal recognition, this NAACP attorney broke that barrier by becoming the first Black Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Who is Thurgood Marshall?

200

In 1955, this boycott began after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, leading to her arrest and one of the most sustained mass protests in American history.

What is the Montgomery Bus Boycott?

200

Known as the greatest basketball player of all time(!), this athlete has built a global business and media empire beyond sports.

Who is LeBron James?

200

This Louisiana dish, influenced by West African one-pot cooking traditions, combines rice, spices, and meat or seafood.

What is jambalaya?

200

The first Black billionaire, Robert F. Smith, founded this private equity firm focusing on enterprise software investments.

What is Vista Equity Partners?

300

In 1965, nearly six decades after Harvard Business School was founded, this man became the first Black graduate of HBS.

Who is George Fitzgerald?

300

This 1921 massacre destroyed “Black Wall Street,” one of the most prosperous Black business districts in U.S. history.

What is the Tulsa Massacre?

300

This Detroit-based record label, founded by Berry Gordy, launched artists like The Supremes and Stevie Wonder.

What is Motown?

300

This slang term, popularized in Black communities and later adopted widely on social media, means someone is lying or being fake.

What is cap?

300

This 1968 federal law, passed one week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., prohibited discrimination in housing sales and rentals.

What is the Fair Housing Act?

400

At a time when thousands of lynchings occurred across the United States and were often publicly justified, this journalist risked her life investigating mob violence and later co-founded the NAACP

Who is Ida B. Wells?

400

Between 1916 and 1970, millions of Black Americans relocated from the rural South to Northern and Western cities in pursuit of industrial jobs and economic opportunity during this mass movement.

What is the Great Migration?

400

This 1971 Marvin Gaye album addressed war, police brutality, and environmental injustice.

What is What’s Going On?

400

This term describes the practice of shifting one’s language or behavior to conform to dominant cultural norms in different social settings.

What is code-switching?

400

As originally written in the U.S. Constitution, enslaved people were counted as this fraction of a person for purposes of congressional representation, increasing southern political power without granting rights.

What is three-fifths?

500

In 1893, at a time when many hospitals refused to treat Black patients, this physician performed one of the first successful open-heart surgeries in the United States.

Who is Daniel Hale Williams?

500

After slavery formally ended, these state and local laws enforced racial segregation across the South.

What are Jim Crow laws?

500

Directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, this 2025 Southern Gothic thriller earned multiple Academy Award nominations, marking a rare moment when a Black-led horror film broke into major Oscar categories.

What is Sinners?

500

Enslaved Africans in the American South were often given discarded animal parts and limited rations, leading to the creation of this culinary tradition now central to Southern cuisine.

What is soul food?

500

This 20th-century housing practice classified certain neighborhoods as “high risk,” restricting access to federally backed mortgages and shaping patterns of wealth inequality.

What is redlining?