Black History Month Quiz

The answers are at the end of the quiz.

Question 1: When did the foreign slave trade end in the United States?

1. The foreign slave trade was abolished in 1808.
2. The foreign slave trade ended with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
3. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 abolished the foreign slave trade.

Question 2: What did the Dred Scott case decide?

1. Slavery was illegal in states admitted to the Union after 1820.
2. Slaves were not citizens, and Congress did not have the right to ban slavery on the state level.
3. A slave who escaped to a free state could no longer be returned to slavery.

Question 3: What was the significance of June 19, 1865, known as Juneteenth?

1. The remaining slaves in the United States learned that the Civil War had been won by the North and that they were now free.
2. The Fifteenth Amendment was passed, giving African-American men the right to vote.
3. The Freedmen's Bureau was established.

Question 4: During Reconstruction, who became the first African-American senator, ironically completing the term vacated ten years earlier by Jefferson Davis, who left the Senate to become the president of the Confederacy?

1. Frederick Douglass
2. Hiram Revels
3. P.B.S. Pinchback

Question 5: Around the turn of the last century a debate raged between two major black leaders, one calling for blacks to strive for economic betterment that would eventually win them wider acceptance in white society, and the other calling for immediate social and political equality. Who were the two framers of this debate?

1. George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington
2. W.E.B. DuBois and Carter Woodson
3. W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington

Question 6: Which of the following was NOT a black nationalist movement?

1. A. Philip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
2. Malcolm X's Nation of Islam
3. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association

Question 7: Rosa Parks' heroic refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a Birmingham bus is an iconic moment in the civil rights movement. But what were the actual circumstances of her refusal?

1. Parks, sitting in the "whites only" section of the bus, refused to move to the back of the bus.
2. Parks, sitting in the "colored section" of the bus, was expected to give up her seat to a white man because all the "whites only" seats in the front of the bus were filled.
3. Parks, having just finished a long day of work, told the bus driver she was simply too tired to get up and move to the back of the bus.

Question 8: Which of the following civil rights murder trials ended with the all-white jury reaching their verdict to acquit the two white suspects in just over an hour? With double-jeopardy protecting them from being retried, the two later boasted about the murders in a Look magazine interview, for which they were paid $4,000.

1. The 1955 murder of Emmett Till
2. The 1964 murders of civil right workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner
3. The murder of Medgar Evers

Question 9: When were the last Jim Crow laws, which institutionalized segregation in the south, abolished?

1. 1954: The Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, ended Jim Crow.
2. 1963: The March on Washington led to the overturning of the last Jim Crow Law.
3. 1968: The passage of the Fair Housing Act.

Question 10: What did the 1978 Bakke decision issued by the Supreme Court determine about affirmative action?

1. Race cannot be a factor in school admissions because it can cause "reverse discrimination."
2. While race is a legitimate factor in school admissions, the use of inflexible quotas is not.
3. Preferential treatment in school admissions based solely on race is constitutional.

ANSWERS TO QUIZ

Question 1: Answer A. The foreign slave trade was abolished in 1808.
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution debated the issue of slavery and ended up with a compromise, which appears in the so-called slavery clause (Article I, Section 9): the slave trade would be legal in the first years of the republic, but could be prohibited beginning in 1808. Congress abolished the foreign slave trade on Jan 1, 1808.  Back to Question

Question 2: Answer B. Slaves were not citizens and Congress did not have the right to ban slavery on the state level.
Dred Scott v. Sandford involved Dred Scott, a slave, who was taken from a slave state to a free territory. Scott filed a lawsuit claiming that because he had lived on free soil he was entitled to his freedom. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney disagreed, ruling that blacks were not citizens and therefore could not sue in federal court. Taney further inflamed antislavery forces by declaring that Congress had no right to ban slavery from U.S. territories.  Back to Question

Question 3: Answer A. The remaining slaves in the United States learned that the Civil War had been won by the North and that they were now free.
On June 19, 1865, two months after the Civil War ended, Gen. Gordon Granger of the Union Army informed the citizens of Galveston, Texas, that all slaves were free. Until then, these last 250,000 slaves in Texas had not been told the Union had won the civil war. The celebration of the day became known as Juneteenth.  Back to Question

Question 4: Answer B. Hiram Revels
In 1870, Hiram Revels was elected the first African-American member of the United States Senate. A few senators objected, arguing that Revels had not been a U.S. citizen for nine years, a requirement for serving in the Senate. African Americans had only technically become citizens four years earlier, after the passage of the 1866 Civil Rights Act. But this ploy to keep him out of the Senate failed; the Senate voted 48 to 8 in favor of Revels. Revels served as senator from Feb. 25, 1870, to March 4, 1871. P.B.S. Pinchback won election to the House of Representatives in 1872 and to the U.S. Senate in 1873. But, white southerners challenged the results, and he was never permitted to assume either office.  Back to Question

Question 5: Answer C. W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington believed in a policy of accommodation to white society, whereas W.E.B. DuBois embraced a radical approach, calling for immediate equality for blacks in all areas of American life.  Back to Question

Question 6: Answer A. A. Philip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
Black nationalism was a central tenet of both Malcolm X's Nation of Islam and Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. It was not sought by A. Philip Randolph, the labor leader who formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925), the first African-American union. In its earliest years, the union fought for shorter hours and better wages and working conditions for its members. It then expanded its goals, fighting against segregation and becoming an important force in triggering the civil rights movement.  Back to Question

Question 7: Answer B. Parks, sitting in the "colored section" of the bus, was expected to give up her seat to a white man because all the "whites only" seats in the front of the bus were filled.
Rosa Parks was already sitting in the "colored section" of the bus when the bus driver asked her to give up her seat to a white man because all the "whites only" seats in the front of the bus were filled. The demarcation between the "colored section" and the "whites only" section shifted on buses, depending on the racial makeup of the bus riders. The "colored section" shrunk if there were lots of whites on the bus. A black person sitting while a white person stood was not tolerated.  Back to Question

Question 8: Answer A. The 1955 murder of Emmett Till
In May 2004, the Justice Department called the 1955 prosecution of the Emmett Till murder a "grotesque miscarriage of justice."  Back to Question

Question 9: Answer C. 1968: The passage of the Fair Housing Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 finally put an end to Jim Crow. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made it illegal to advertise "any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination."  Back to Question

Question 10: Answer B. While race is a legitimate factor in school admissions, the use of inflexible quotas is not.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke imposed limitations on affirmative action to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the rights of the majority. The case involved the University of Calif., Davis, Medical School and Allan Bakke, a white applicant who was rejected twice even though there were minority applicants admitted with significantly lower scores than his. A closely divided Court ruled that while race was a legitimate factor in school admissions, the use of rigid quotas was not permissible.  Back to Question

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Last Modified: 02/15/2008