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Black History Month Quiz

We wanted to pass on Trivia Relief's Quiz in honor of Black History Month - a series of 28 questions honoring some of the Black men and women who have contributed so much to this country, in the face of so much opposition.  The answers are at the end of the quiz on page 12

1) The youngest speaker at the March on Washington was this head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who later served more than thirty years as Congressman from Atlanta.


2) At the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Lauryn Williams became only the second
American and fifth person in history to achieve what distinction?

3) In 1930, already an international star, Paul Robeson played the title
character in this play, which he termed “a tragedy of racial conflict”.
 Robeson’s historic performance, praised for its “dignity and stately
magnificence”, was rewarded with twenty curtain calls on opening night.

4) A marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail commemorates the moment this
“King of the Blues” encountered a man playing slide guitar while
waiting for a train.  As a musician and composer, he brought the blues from
the Delta to global prominence.

5) Her 2000 New York Times obituary stated that she “illuminated the
black experience in America in poems that spanned most of the 20th
century.”  She won the Pulitzer in 1950 for her second book of poems,
Annie Allen, becoming the first African American to win the prize.

6) This prominent abolitionist published The North Star, whose motto was
“Right is of no sex – Truth is of no color – God is the Father of us
all, and all we are brethren.”

7) These two San Francisco Giants greats, who share a name, played together
from 1958 to 1971.  With almost as many career home runs as Ruth-Gehrig,
they constituted one of the most powerful batting duos in baseball history.


8) A woman of many talents, Maya Angelou was among the first partners of
this dancer, who founded his American Dance Theater in 1958.  At his 1989
funeral, Angelou read a poem dedicated to him, concluding, “And Lord,
give him all the pliés he needs until eternity.”

9) Name the Supreme Court case that effectively ended legalized public
school segregation in the United States and, within three years, provide
the date of the unanimous ruling.  (BONUS – The landmark decision
overturned what infamous precedent established by the 1896 case Plessy v.
Ferguson?)

10) During the decade spanning 1957 to 1967, this jazz great had a colossal
creative output, producing classic albums including Giant Steps, My
Favorite Things and A Love Supreme.  With a style characterized as
“sheets of sound”, he ranks among the best jazz saxophonists ever.
Praising the subject’s rise from humble roots, Nat Hentoff cited his
willingness “to practice more, to do all the things that somebody has to
do to excel.”

11) This American artist is credited with reviving the art of the cut-paper
silhouette in the 1990s, using the medium to probe issues of race, gender
and power.

12) The 1936 Summer Olympics witnessed a remarkable feat of sportsmanship,
when the German long jump champion and Olympic recordholder (Luz Long)
provided advice to this rival, who was in danger of fouling-out of the
competition.  The rival remained in contention and emerged victorious, with
Long being the first to offer congratulations.

13) Occurring near the start of summer, this annual celebration
commemorates General Orders, Number 3 (1865), which freed slaves in Texas.
From there, the tradition spread throughout the South and remainder of the
country.

14) Her Danse Sauvage made her an international star, as did her
performance in Zouzou, the first Hollywood leading role for an African
American woman.  During World War II, she provided the French Resistance
with intelligence overheard at performances.  Addressing the March on
Washington, she decried racism in her native land with the declaration,
“I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens…But I could not
walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee…”.

15) In 1959, Berry Gordy took an $800 loan from his family to found this
company, whose headquarters displayed a sign that read “Hitsville
U.S.A.”.  Over the next decade, it produced a staggering procession of
music, with worldwide hits by the likes of Diana Ross & the Supremes,
Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson.

16) This African American artist worked in a variety of media but, in a
1988 obituary, was described as “the nation’s foremost collagist”.
The subject is especially associated with Harlem, where he spent much of
his life, and depictions of the area’s rich culture.  He was a principal
founding member of Spiral, an artists’ collective dedicated to the civil
rights movement.

17) Born Eunice Waymon, she achieved global fame under this stage name.
Acclaimed as one of the most talented vocalists of her generation, she was
an active campaigner for social justice, with her music a significant
backdrop to the civil rights movement.  Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall
of Fame in 2018, her profile includes, “Her triumphant voice sang what it
meant to be young, gifted and black in a sometimes unjust and troubled
world.”

18) Born in Crockett, Texas, in 1935, Myrtis Dightman is considered the
Jackie Robinson of this rugged athletic profession.  During the 1960s and
1970s, he reached the US national finals seven times.

19) This actor originated the role of Troy Maxson in the 1987 debut of
August Wilson’s Fences, winning the Tony Award for Best Actor.  With a
distinguished career in both theater and film, he is perhaps most famous
for providing his resonant voice to an iconic screen character.

20) With his famous orchestra, this jazz legend toured the world for almost
half a century until his death in 1974.  He is universally regarded as one
of the all-time great jazz composers, with hundreds of songs to his name,
including “Sophisticated Lady, “In A Sentimental Mood” and ”Don’t
Get Around Much Any More”.  As his biography at the Songwriters Hall of
Fame notes, “His influence…simply cannot be overstated.”

21) He was the first African American staff photographer at Life.  Over the
next two decades, his work chronicled social ills – notably poverty and
racism – and provided support for the civil rights movement.

22) Born a slave, this American abolitionist dropped her birth name in
1843, when she embarked on a career as one of the most noted evangelists of
her era.  A fervent advocate for equal rights for women, she is especially
remembered for an 1851 speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, with
its famous refrain “And ain’t I a woman?”

23) This author’s first novel gained the 1953 National Book Award, the
first won by an African American.  In his acceptance speech, he spoke of
his “dream of a prose…confronting the inequalities and brutalities of
our society forthrightly, but yet thrusting forth its images of hope, human
fraternity, and individual self-realization.”

24) Eddie Murphy praised this fellow comedian as “better than anyone who
ever picked up a microphone”, a view confirmed by the subject topping
Rolling Stone’s “50 Best Stand-Up Comics of All Time”.  Regarding the
subject’s mid-career transition, another famous comedian observed,
“[he] killed the Bill Cosby in his act…it was the most astonishing
metamorphosis I have ever seen.  He was magnificent.”

25) In April 1939, denied a venue due to segregation, this renowned singer
performed at the Lincoln Memorial instead.  Harold Ickes introduced her to
the crowd of 75,000 with the words “Genius, like justice, is blind.”
Among many other distinctions, the subject was the first African American
to perform at the Metropolitan Opera and received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1963.

26) Eulogizing this friend in 1988, Keith Haring wrote, “Anyone who lived
in downtown Manhattan at this time [1979] was aware of the presence of
Samo©.  The simple sentences sprayed onto buildings, bridges and crumbling
walls appeared to be the utterance of some newborn philosopher.”

27) This noted sociologist addressed the challenges of the turbulent
post-Civil War era in his 1935 book, Black Reconstruction in America.  He
characterized the quest for “absolute equality” as “the last great
battle of the West”.

28) At the 1992 US Open, twenty-four years after he won the event as an
amateur on military leave, tennis royalty convened in support of this
man’s Foundation for the Defeat of Aids.  In addition to historic
championships and five Davis Cup wins, the subject is remembered for his
social activism, including outspoken opposition to apartheid.  His
International Tennis Hall of Fame bio refers to him as “the sport’s
most elegant and thoughtful ambassador.”

And a closing thought…

Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation
must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.

John Lewis, 2017

Answers to The Black History Month Quiz

1.John Lewis
2.Winning a medal at both the Summer and Winter Olympics
3.Othello
4.W.C. Handy
5.Gwendolyn Brooks
6.Frederick Douglass
7.Willie Mays and Willie McCovey
8.Alvin Ailey
9.Brown v. Board of Education / May17, 1954 (“Separate but equal”)
10.John Coltrane
11.Kara Walker
12.Jesse Owens
13.Juneteenth
14.Josephine Baker
15.Motown Records
16.Romare Bearden
17.Nina Simone
18.Rodeo, specifically bull riding
19.James Earl Jones
20.Duke Ellington
21.Gordon Parks
22.Sojourner Truth
23.Ralph Ellison (for Invisible Man)
24.Richard Pryor
25.Marian Anderson
26.Jean-Michel Basquiat
27.W.E.B. Du Bois
28.Arthur Ashe


 

 

   
   


Copyright © 2021 by [The Sojourner's Truth]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 02/25/21 12:24:18 -0500.


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