Who was the first Black woman aviator and the first to gain an international pilot’s permit?
1. Clara Hale
2. Bessie Coleman
3. Bessie Smith
4. Bessie Earhart
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 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 woman ever elected to the Texas Senate, who was also the first Black woman elected to Congress from the South?
1. Toni Morrison
2. Barbara Jordan
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 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. Ella Baker
2. Rosa Parks
3. Maya Angelou
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).
Which tennis player came back after childbirth to earn a runner-up position at Wimbledon 2018?
1. Althea Gibson
2. Sloan Stephens
3. Serena Williams
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 became the first Black woman nominated to serve as Vice President of the U.S. by a major political party?
1. Kamala Harris
2. Susan Rice
3. Michelle Obama
4. Valerie Jarrett
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.
Who is the author of the landmark play, A Raisin in the Sun?
1. Lorraine Hansberry
2. Shirley Chisholm
3. Dorothy Height
4. Harriet Jacobs
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 African-American journalist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the U.S.?
1. Maggie Lena Walker
2. Ida B. Wells-Barnett
3. Pearl Bailey
4. Harriet Tubman
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 African-American woman dubbed “The Moses of Her People”?
1. Rosa Parks
2. Harriet Tubman
3. Sojourner Truth
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 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.
