2025 Black History Bowl Questions

Who wrote The Autobipgraphy of Malcom X?

Alex Haley

Who is known as the “Queen of Soul”?

Aretha Franklin

Who was the first African American woman to win an Academy Award?

Hattie McDaniel

Who wrote the famous song “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud?”

James Brown

B.B. King is noted for what type of music?

Blues

What group was comprised of Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, and Mary Wilson?

The Supremes

What record company did Berry Gordy, Jr. create?

Motown

The Roaring Twenties introduced an unprecendented outpouring of black art, literature, and music. What was this period known as?

Harlem Renaissance

What African American took jaz vocals to a new level and was called “The Divine One”

Sarah Vaughan

Who authored the book “Roots”?

Alex Haley

Who is the author of The Color Purple?

Alice Walker

Who won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway musical “Jelly’s Last Jam”?

Gregory Hines

Who sold more than 20 million albums and collected more than 700,000 pounds of food for charity during the 1992 “Too Legit To Quit” tour?

M.C. Hammer

what famous musician’s trademark was puffing cheeks and a trumpet bell that pointed skyward?

Dizzy Gillespie

Who wan an Oscar for his role in the 1989 film Glory?

Denzel Washington

What is the name of the record label started by Berry Gordy Jr?

Motown

Motown is short for Motor Town or Motor City, a nickname for what auto-producing city?

Detroit, Michigan

Who was the first black person to win a Pulitzer Prize?

Gwendolyn Brooks

Who founded the magazine Ebony?

John H. Johnson

Who was the first black woman to own a TV studio?

Oprah Winfrey

Mary Leontyne Price is famous for being..?

An opera singer

Who starred in the TV series “The Jeffersons”?

Sherman Hemsley

Benjamin Banneker convinced what U.S. president that African Americans were intelligent and deserved to be free?

Thomas Jefferson

Starting with $1.50 in cash, what college did Mary McLeod Bethune found?

Bethune-Cookman College

What did many associate with the term “Jim Crow”?

Racial segregation

CORE, SCLC, and NAACP share what common goal?

Equal rights for African Americans

Who sparked the Montgomery boycott of 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on the bus?

Rosa Parks

Approximately how many different products did George Washington Carver develop from peanuts?

325

Who was the principal at Tuskegee Institute who recruited and hired George Washington Carver?

Booker T. Washington

What was the name of the influential antislavery newspaper published by Frederick Douglas?

The North Star

Charles Drew spearheaded the world’s first:

Blood bank program

What did the Freedom Riders seek to accomplish?

To integrate interstate travel and bus stations

What was the name of Marcus Garvey’s shipping company that was owned and operated entirely by black people?

Black Star Line

Barbara Jordan became the South’s first African American to hold this political position?

Congresswoman

Where did Martin Luther King Jr/ utter the immortal words, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream”?

The Lincoln Memorial

In 1954, what landmark Supreme Court case did Thurgood Marshall help orchestrate?

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

To what position was Colin Powell appointed, making him the highest ranking military officer - and first African American and the youngest man to hold this post?

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Who was the first African American Supreme Court Justice?

Thurgood Marshall

What African American union organizer helped open the door for the U.S. Congress to pass legislation outlawing job discrimination?

Philip Randolph

What African American revolutionary led colonial forces during the Boston Massacre in 1770, becoming the first to defy, and the first to die?

Crispus Attucks

What leading crusader against lynching founded the first black women’s suffrage organization?

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

What were the black soldiers who primarily fought Native Americans in the West after the Civil War called?

Buffalo Soldiers

Matthew Henson was famous for reaching this spot on the globe?

North Pole

Who was elected to Congress in 1944 and became the first congressperson to represent the district of Harlem?

Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

Who appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court?

Lyndon B. Johnson

Harold Washington became what city’s first African American mayor?

Chicago

Carol Moseley-Braun was the first African American woman elected to the U.S.:

Senate

In what famous court case did the justices rule that, “Blacks are an inferior class of beings who has no rights which the white man was bound to respect”?

Dred Scott case

Who founded an economic program called “People United to save Humanity” also known as Operation PUSH?

Jesse Jackson