Black History Knowledge Bowl

2011

Jesse Jackson

• This African American leader was a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King. He founded Operation Push and the Rainbow Coalition. He ran for President of the United States.

Coretta Scott King

• This African American leader married Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She was sought after as a public speaker. She founded The King Center in Atlanta, Georgia in memory of Dr. King.

Ella Baker

• This African American leader worked in the literacy program under President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, as secretary, for the NAACP, and acting director of the Southern Leadership Conference.

Andrew Young

• This African American leader who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was convinced that he could change the injustice in America without violence. He was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a congressman, and former mayor of Atlanta, Georgia.

Fannie Lou Hamer

• This African American leader worked in the cotton fields at the age of six. She grew up to make national headlines by challenging the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.

Dorothy Height

• This African American leader spent years fighting for African American civil rights, women's issues, and economic well-being. She helped desegregate the YWCA

Elijah McCoy

• This African American inventor developed a lubricator for steam engines that did not require the train to stop. Trains in the 1800's needed to stop periodically to be lubricated to prevent overheating.

Dr. George F. Grant

• This African American inventor was one of the first African Americans to graduate from Harvard College. He was a dentist, and is recognized as the inventor of the golf tee.

Louis Latimer

• This African American inventor was a pioneer in the development of the electric light bulb. He was given credit for improving the quality and life of the carbon filament used in light bulbs.

Carter G. Woodson

• Black History Month, starting as Negro History Week, began as an effort by this African American (1875-1950) to recognize the valuable contributions African Americans made in the United States and throughout the world.

W.E.B. DuBois

• This African American was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. He has been called the "the most important leader during the first half of the 20th century."

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.

• This African American was a United States Air Force officer. In 1959, he became the first African American officer in history to be made a major general.

Augusta Braxton Baker

• This African American librarian was upset by the representation of Black characters in the books available to African American children in 1939. She collected a number of books that provided African American role models and presented an accurate view of African-American life to young people.

John Hope Franklin

• In 1940, this African American was appointed president of Morehouse College. He taught Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders

Alain Locke

• This African American was a Rhodes Scholar that significantly dismissed the belief of many white Americans scholars who believed that African Americans were intellectually inferior.

Barack Obama

• This African American was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.

Joycelyn Elders

• In 1993, this African American became the first woman and first African American U.S. Surgeon General.

Deval Patrick

• This African American became the Governor of Massachusetts on January 4, 2007. He is only the second African American Governor since reconstruction.

Phyllis Wheatley

• This African American poet published the first book of poetry by an African-American in America

Paul Laurence Dunbar

• This African American was once called the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race."

Maria Miller Stewart

• This African American's lecture to the New England Anti-Slavery Society of September 21, 1832, was the first public lecture by an American-born women before an audience of men and woman.

Williams Wells Brown

• This African American author taught himself to read and write. He became the first African American "travel writer."

Nikki Giovanni

• During the 1960's, this African American was known as the "Princess of Black Poetry."

Muhammad Ali

• In 1974, this African American boxer, civil rights activist and humanitarian became the undisputed heavyweight champion by defeating Joe Frazier in January and George Foreman in October.

Candace Parker

• This African American was the first woman basketball player in NCAA history to dunk a basketball twice in a tournament game (March 19, 2006).

Carl Lewis

• This African American track and field star grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey. He won 10 Olympic medals and 10 World Championship medals.

Hank Aaron

• On April 8, 1974, this African American hit his 715th home run, which broke Babe Ruth's record of 714 homeruns.

Isaac Murphy

• This African American was the first jockey of any race to win the Kentucky Derby three times.

Diahann Carroll

• This Academy Award nominated actress was the first African American to star in her own TV sitcom (a situation comedy).

Stevie Wonder

• The African American is a singer, composer, and musician. His real name is Stevland Morris. He sang his version of Happy Birthday at a tribute for Dr. Martin Luther King in an effort to have his birthday declared a national holiday.

Marian Anderson

• This African American celebrated singer was the first African American to ever open a Metropolitan Opera season. She was one of the twelve people to receive the first National Medal of Arts by President Reagan in 1985.

Henry O. Tanner

• This African American artist was the first African American to receive international recognition. Through the efforts of Hillary Clinton, a collection of his paintings are the first paintings by an African American to hang in the White House.

Jamie Foxx

• This person won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2005 for the movie "Ray." lie is the only African American actor to be nominated twice in one year for an Academy Award.

Gordon Parks

• This person was the first African American photographer for Life magazine. He was also the first African American film director that directed a film for a major studio (Warner Brothers 1969). It was based on his first book, The Learning Tree.

Charlie Parker

• This Jazz musician played saxophone with Dizzy Gillespie and played a jazz style known as “Bebop.” His nickname was “Bird.” A famous nightclub in New York called Birdland was named for him.

Jesse Owens

• What Alabama native became an American hero after an amazing performance at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He was nicknamed the world’s fastest man.

Benjamin Banneker

• The Mathematician, Astronomer, and Inventor who is best known as a surveyor of Washington D.C.

Ben Carson

• This neurosurgeon and professor led a medical team that became the first to separate Siamese twins successfully.

Daniel Hale Williams

• He founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago. In 1893, he performed the first successful open heart surgery.

Jean Baptiste du Sable

• Who was a successful trader and entrepreneur who laid the foundation for one of the largest and most important cities of the world, Chicago?

Sojourner Truth

• This Black American woman wrote a book that was published in 1850. She was a great public speaker although she was illiterate. She spoke about Women’s Rights and the End of Slavery. Her real name was Isabella Baumfree but she went by the name of