By Chaitram Aklu
(Answers Below)
1. Hats designed by this famous hat designer were featured on the cover of the 1942 issue of Ladies Home Journal.
Who is _________?
2. Regarded as ‘the nation’s most visible proponent of Black Nationalism,” his mother was born in Grenada which celebrates its independence during Black History Month on February 7.
Who is _________?
3. This dress maker designed the inaugural ball gown worn by First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, was a slave who used her earnings to purchase her freedom.
Who is ___________?
4. The wedding gown worn by Jackie Bouvier in 1953, when she married John F. Kennedy, was designed by this woman.
Who is __________?
5. His autobiography written in 1789 is regarded as the first autobiography written in English by a former slave.
Who is __________?
6. Negro History Week, first observed in 1926, then evolved into Black History Month, was founded by this historian.
Who is ___________?
7. She hails from Birmingham Alabama, and has the distinction of being the first African America female to serve as National Security Advisor.
Who is ___________?
8. James Earl Jones starred in the (1994) movie depicting the life of this predecessor of Martin Luther King Jr. as Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama in 1954.
Who is ____________?
9. Born prematurely in the U.S.A., this actor, whose parents were from another country, was the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Who is ____________?
10. This ruling by the United States Supreme Court declared that School segregation was unconstitutional?
What is __________?
11. This individual was the first African American to be featured on a U.S. postage stamp.
Who is ____________?
12. He was the first African American to vote.
Who is ______________?
13. This doctor was the first African American to successfully perform open heart surgery.
Who is ______________?
14. This institution is the oldest of the Historically Black Colleges.
What is ____________?
15. February was chosen as Black History Month to honor these two individuals.
Who are _____________?
16. This little creature which appeared in the US in 1892 destroyed hundreds of miles of cotton crops and was partially responsible for the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North.
What is _______________?
17. This book took its Pulitzer Prize winning author 12 years to complete and spanned six generations retracing the author’s ancestry to Africa.
What is _______________?
18. This women’s organization was founded in 1896.
What is the ______________?
19. When this site was opened on February 27, 2010 in Lower Manhattan, New York, it became the First Underground National Monument in the United States.
What is ________________?
20. This riot started in New York City mainly by white men, who feared that their jobs would be taken over by free blacks, and the fact that rich people could buy their way out for $300.
What is ________________?
ANSWERS:
1. Who is Mildred Blount? Her hats were worn by casts in movies such as Gone with the Wind, Easter Parade, and Back Street.
2. Who is Malcolm X (Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19, 1925)?
3. Who is Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907)?
4. Who is Ann Lowe (1899-1981)?
5. Who is Olaudah Equiano who was renamed Gustavus Vassa by his Virginia slave owner? It was titled: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olauddah Equiano; or, Gustavus, the African, Written by Himself.
6. Who is Carter G. Woodson?
7. Who is Condoleezza Rice?
8. Who is the Reverend Vernon Johns?
9. Who is Sidney Poitier? His Bahamian parents were on one of their regular marketing trips to sell tomatoes in Miami when he was born unexpectedly.
10. What is Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas (1954)? It outlawed Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) who held that separate but equal was legal. Lead Attorney Thurgood Marshall told the court “Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time, and in the same place.”
11. Who is Booker T (Taliaferro) Washington?
12. Who is Thomas Mundy Peterson? (1870)
13. Who is Dr. Hale Williams?
14. What is Shaw University in Washington DC?
15. Who are Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln both of whom were born in February?
16. What is the boll weevil, a beetle?
17. What is Alex Haley’s, Roots: The Saga of an American Family? Published in 1976, and made into a movie in 1979?
18. What is the National Association of Colored Women?
19. What is the African Burial Ground National Monument?
20. What is the New York City Draft Riots July 13 – 16, 1863? It was in opposition to a new federal draft law and is regarded as “the worst, bloodiest, most destructive and brutal riot” in the city’s history.
