Back to Black History Basics

Ever since Black History Month was established in 1976, February has ushered in a special curriculum that earlier generations of schoolchildren may have missed. The question is: Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?

1. The Supreme Court handed down this landmark decision banning the practice of school segregation in 1954, and the NAACP lawyer who argued for the winning side would go on to become our first black Supreme Court justice.

2. A woman born into bondage, this latter-day Moses risked life and liberty repeatedly to lead some 300 slaves down the Underground Railroad to freedom.

3. Backed by a presidential order and 5,000 federal troops, in 1962 he became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. 

4. One of the most influential speeches in American history, this 1895 address – delivered by a black Northerner to a largely white audience in the South – asked whites to trust blacks and give them jobs.

5. In 1964, the Civil Rights Movement saw two major legislative breakthroughs within the span of six months: one in January; one in July.

6. Issued in the autumn of 1965, this document required government contractors to “take affirmative action” toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.

7. Responding to more than a hundred urban riots in 1967, Congress passed and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed this legislation prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing.

8. Fifty years after her simple act of disobedience changed everything, the mother of the Civil Rights Movement passed away at the age of 92.

9. This fair-skinned Louisiana Creole struck a blow for freedom when he announced to the conductor in a whites-only rail car that his great-grandmother was black. The resulting Supreme Court decision was infamous.

10. Within weeks of gaining the right to vote, African Americans saw an AME minister from Mississippi sworn in as the first black U.S. senator. Only 10 years earlier, his seat had been occupied by Jefferson Davis.

11. Begun as scribbles in the margins of newspapers and on the backs of legal papers, this 1963 document – smuggled piecemeal from a jail cell – became the bedrock of the Civil Rights Movement.

12. After this NAACP field secretary was gunned down in cold blood and all-white juries in Mississippi let his killer go free, protest songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Nina Simone made him an enduring symbol of racisim in the judicial system. 

13. An All-American scholar-athlete and valedictorian at Rutgers who went on to get his law degree at Columbia University, this son of a slave and early civil rights activist is best remembered for his glorious voice – capable of descending to C below the bass clef.

14. In the wake of Reconstruction, this pioneering higher-education legislation seeded a bumper crop of historically black “aggie” colleges.

›› CONTEST RULES 
We are looking for the specific individuals, legislation, court decisions or documents referenced in each of the 14 clues. Up to five $30 gift certificates from Borders Books and Music will be awarded to the black history buffs who can recognize these civil right pillars. If more than five perfect entries are received, five winners will be drawn by lot.

Send your answers by no later than March 31 to The Last Word c/o USC Trojan Family Magazine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7790.

Submissions by fax (213-821-1100) and e-mail <magazines@usc.edu> are welcome.