Who is the actress, dancer, choreographer and director who achieved critical acclaim for her breakthrough performance in the Broadway revival of West Side Story?
1. Marian Anderson
2. Debbie Allen
3. Phylicia Rashad
4. Josephine Baker
Debbie Allen
The talented Debbie Allen began to receive critical attention for her performance in West Side Story, earning major award nominations for her role; she went on to star in numerous productions over the years, with the most well-known perhaps being her role in Fame from 1982-1987.
Who was the first African-American to be named U. S. Poet Laureate?
1. Ruby Dee
2. Shirley Graham DuBois
3. Rita Dove
4. Eartha Kitt
Rita Dove
At age 40, Rita Dove was the youngest person to hold the position of Poet Laureate of the US and was the first African-American to hold the position since 1986, when the title was changed from Consultant in Poetry to Poet Laureate.
Which tennis player came back after childbirth to earn a runner-up position at Wimbledon 2018?
1. Sloan Stephens
2. Serena Williams
3. Althea Gibson
4. Venus Williams
Serena Williams
Serena Williams came back in 2018 to earn runner-up at Wimbledon after the birth of her daughter, Olympia, in September of 2017. Williams has, in fact, won more championship matches than any other woman in tennis history and for this reason is often called the best woman athlete in history.
Who was named by President Clinton as the first woman and the first African-American U.S. Surgeon General?
1. Alice Dunbar-Nelson
2. Anita Hill
3. Jocelyn Elders
4. Julia Foote
Jocelyn Elders
Before Joycelyn Elders became the first African-American U.S. Surgeon General she was an esteemed pediatrician and public health administrator, as well as a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
Who was the Civil Rights activist who founded the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973?
1. Michelle Obama
2. Marian Wright Edelman
3. Shirley Chisholm
4. Mary McLeod Bethune
Marian Wright Edelman
Marian Wright Edelman, an advocate for the disadvantaged her entire life, founded the Children’s Defense Fund with the aim to help children be healthy, stay in school, avoid teen pregnancy, and prevent child abuse and childhood drug abuse.
Who is the author of the landmark play, A Raisin in the Sun?
1. Dorothy Height
2. Shirley Chisholm
3. Harriet Jacobs
4. Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry is the author of the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway and the first to earn the best play award by the New York Drama Critics' Circle (1959).
Who was the first female undertaker in the nation?
1. Mary McLeod Bethune
2. Henrietta Duterte
3. Marva Collins
4. Angela Davis
Henrietta Duterte
Henrietta Duterte, an African-American, conducted funeral business in Philadelphia in the 1850s and was also an agent of the Underground Railroad, often hiding freedom seeking Black people in coffins in funeral processions.
The first African-American woman to win three gold medals in the International Olympics?
1. Jackie Joyner-Kersee
2. Serena Williams
3. Wilma Rudolph
4. Esther Rolle
Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Rudolph, an advocate for women’s and civil rights, overcame childhood polio to become the fastest woman in the world and participate in two Olympic Games, 1956 and 1960. Also in 1960, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals.
Who was the first African-American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry?
1. Gwendolyn Brooks
2. Josephine Baker
3. Marian Anderson
4. Jessie Redmon Fauset
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks published her first poem at 13, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950, for her second collection of poems, Annie Allen, subsequently became Poet Laureate of Illinois (1968 until her death in 2000) and held a host of other honors and accolades for her works.
Who was the first Black woman to be elected to Congress?
1. Valerie Jarrett
2. Patricia Roberts Harris
3. Shirley Chisholm
4. Alexis Herman
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Chisholm was not only the first Black woman to be elected to Congress, she was also the first Black person, man or woman, to seek a major party’s nomination for the United States presidency.
What Chicago native was the first Black woman to be elected to the U. S. Senate?
1. Mary Church Terrell
2. Constance Baker Motley
3. Maxine Waters
4. Carol Moseley Braun
Carol Moseley Braun
Serving from 1993-1999, Carol Moseley Braun was the first African-American woman Senator and the first African-American U.S. Senator for the Democratic Party; from 1999-2001, she served as United States Ambassador to New Zealand.
Who was the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge?
1. Constance Baker Motley
2. Condoleezza Rice
3. C. Delores Tucker
4. Valerie Jarrett
Constance Baker Motley
Constance Baker Motley was a civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator who also played a major role in legal preparations for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. She was appointed Federal Judge of the Southern District of New York in 1966by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Who is the Georgia born activist who was founder and president of the National Domestic Workers of America (NDWU), Inc.?
1. Amy Jacques Garvey
2. Dorothy Lee Bolden
3. Myrlie Evers
4. Willie B. Barrows
Dorothy Lee Bolden
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Dorothy Lee Bolden founded the NDWU in 1968 which was an organization devoted to training and educating domestic workers; she later became an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
Who was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
1. Alice Walker
2. Phillis Wheatley
3. Nella Larsen
4. Margaret Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Walker, highly acclaimed novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist, is author of The Color Purple, which in 1982 earned the first Pulitzer Prize for an African-American writer. The book was made into the highly successful 1985 movie of the same title, directed by Steven Spielberg and featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg.
Who was the grass roots civil rights leader who led the “Freedom Summers” in Mississippi and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party?
1. Ella Baker
2. Rosa Parks
3. Fannie Lou Hamer
4. Charlotte Hawkins Brown
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was a staunch Civil Rights and voting rights activist who cofounded and represented the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
Who was the first woman ever elected to the Texas Senate, who was also the first Black woman elected to Congress from the South?
1. Barbara Jordan
2. Toni Morrison
3. Georgia Douglas Johnson
4. Maria Stewart
Barbara Jordan
Barbara Jordan, a lawyer, educator, politician, and Civil Rights activist, was the first African-American congresswoman from the deep South (1972-1978) and the first to give a keynote speech before a national convention.
Who is the widely-known actress who earned an Emmy Award for her performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman?
1. Cicely Tyson
2. Angela Bassett
3. Josephine Baker
4. Whoopi Goldberg
Cicely Tyson
Well known actress, Cicely Tyson was nominated for the Academy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress for her performance in Sounder (1972) and for her performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974) for which she earned an Emmy Award. During her career, in total, she has earned three Primetime Emmy Awards, four Black Reel Awards, one Screen Actor Guild Award, and one Tony Award. She was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States in November 2016, by President Barack Obama.
Who was the African-American journalist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the U.S.?
1. Ida B. Wells-Barnett
2. Harriet Tubman
3. Pearl Bailey
4. Maggie Lena Walker
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, was a journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement who campaigned feverishly against Lynching. She was also one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Her autobiography, Crusade for Justice, was published posthumously in 1970.
Who was the first African-American woman to receive a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1962?
1. Diahann Carroll
2. Debbie Allen
3. Maya Angelou
4. Claire Huxtable
Diahann Carroll
Diahann Carroll was a highly acclaimed stage and television actress and singer who received a Tony Award for her performance in No Strings, and in 1968 a Golden Globe Award for Best TV Star—Female for her role in Julia.
Who was the African-American woman dubbed “The Moses of Her People”?
1. Sojourner Truth
2. Rosa Parks
3. Harriet Tubman
4. Mary McLeod Bethune
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman aided scores of enslaved Blacks to escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad and she subsequently served as a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War.
Who was the first Black woman aviator and the first to gain an international pilot’s permit?
1. Bessie Earhart
2. Bessie Coleman
3. Clara Hale
4. Bessie Smith
Bessie Coleman
Because no pilot school in the U.S. would train a Black person to fly in 1922, Bessie Coleman had to receive her training and earn her pilot’s permit in France.
Who was a leading suffragist and first president of the National Association of a a. Colored Women (NACW)?
1. Angela Davis
2. Coretta Scott King
3. Nannie Helen Burroughs
4. Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage; in 1909 she was a founding member of NACW; in 1940, her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World, was published.
Who is the African-American activist in the Civil Rights Movement, best known for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery (AL) bus?
1. Fannie Lou Hamer
2. Etta Moten
3. Rosa Parks
4. Bernice Reagon
Rosa Parks
In 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, she was arrested; her arrest helped spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted 381 days.
Who was the African-American woman who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., serving as executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)?
1. Maya Angelou
2. Rosa Parks
3. Ella Baker
4. Della Reese
Ella Baker
In addition to working with MLK Jr., Ella Baker worked with most of the leading Civil Rights leaders and mentored a host of younger Civil Rights activists, including helping to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Who became the first Black woman nominated to serve as Vice President of the U.S. by a major political party?
1. Valerie Jarrett
2. Kamala Harris
3. Michelle Obama
4. Susan Rice
Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris, politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from California from 2017-2019, ran an unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid, was selected by 2020 presidential nominee, Joe Biden, to serve as his vice presidential candidate.
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