Jeopardy Great Black Americans in honor of Black American History Month

1. JeopardyGreat Black Americansin honor ofBlack American History Month Second Grade Social Studies

2. National African American History Month • National African American History Month is observed each February as a time to recognize the contributions of African Americans to the culture at large. This celebration has its origins in Negro History Week, which was established in 1926 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson.

3. Famous Black Americans • There are hundreds of famous black Americans, but there are those more famous than other we will study this month. • These famous black Americans include athletes, actors, musicians, scientists, inventors, former slaves, teachers, poets, civil rights leaders, politicians, and writers. These important people made advances for all black Americans today.

4. She spent her childhood in a small Southern community. She attended an all-black school. Maya moved to San Fransisco when she was a teenager. She studied drama, dance, and music. She wrote about her childhood in the South and became a famous author. She also wrote poetry, plays, and a TV series.

5. He hit 755 home runs during his major league baseball career, making him America's all-time home run leader for the next three decades. He hit number 715 on 8 April 1974, moving him past the record 714 career homers of Babe Ruth. Much like Roger Maris, he was maligned by some fans who thought he was somehow unfit to surpass the mighty Ruth. (Racism played a part; he was black, and he passed Ruth's record only 28 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball.) He retired after the 1976 season, holding the all-time records for home runs (755) and RBIs (2297)and having played in a record 24 All-Star Games. He was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1982.

6. He (August 4, 1901 - July 6, 1971) was a great jazz trumpet player, composer, and singer. He was nicknamed Satchmo because some people said that his mouth was like a satchel. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and soon became a well-known cornet player in clubs and on riverboats along the Mississippi River. He became world famous for his incredible musical talent, especially his improvised solos. He also sang "scat," a style in which nonsense words are used in a song. He was featured in many recordings, television shows, and movies. He celebrated his birthday on July 4.

7. She was a Chicago poet, the poet laureate of Illinois and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She first collection of poems, A Street in Bronzeville, was published in 1945 to widespread critical acclaim.

8. He (1865?-1943) was an American scientist, educator, humanitarian, and former slave. He made scientific discoveries that helped farmers in the South. He taught farmers to grow peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes. He also taught them to rotate crops in order to renew the soil. He developed hundreds of products from peanuts.

9. (September 23, 1930 - June 10, 2004) He was born in Albany, Georgia on September 23, 1930 (he shares a birthday with another musical icon, John Coltrane). He was not born blind - he lost his sight to undiagnosed glaucoma at age seven. He enrolled in the St. Augustine (Fla) School for the deaf and blind, where he developed his enormous musical gift. After his mother's death, he set out as a solo act, modeling himself after Nat "King" Cole. During a career that has spanned some 58 years, he starred on over 250 albums, many of them top sellers in a variety of musical genres.

10. She (Nov. 30, 1924 - Jan. 1, 2005) was the first African-American woman elected to the US Congress. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. After being a teacher and serving as a New York state assemblywoman, she was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives. She served in Congress for seven terms, from January 3, 1969, until January 3, 1983. In 1972, she was the first African-American woman to run for a major-party presidential nomination. During her long political career, she fought for the rights of women and minorities.

11. She was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, in the 1948 high jump. She was also the only American woman to win a track and field event at the Olympics that year. She would probably have won more medals if the 1940 and 1944 Olympics hadn't been canceled because of World War II, for she dominated the high jump for a decade and she was also a fine sprinter. She won the AAU outdoor high jump championship from 1939 through 1948, and she was indoor champion in 1941, 1945, and 1946; there was no indoor competition from 1938 through 1940 or from 1942 through 1944. She won the outdoor 50-meter dash from 1943 through 1947, the outdoor 100-meter in 1942, 1945 and 1946, and the indoor 50-meter dash in 1945 and 1946. Representing Tuskegee Institute, she also ran on the national champion 4 x 100-meter relay team in 1941 and 1942.

12. For a mild-mannered man whose music was always easy on the ear, he managed to be a figure of considerable controversy during his 30 years as a professional musician. From the late '40s to the mid-'60s, he was a massively successful pop singer who ranked with such contemporaries as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dean Martin. He shared with those peers a career that encompassed hit records, international touring, radio and television shows, and appearances in films. But unlike them, he had not emerged from a background as a band singer in the swing era.

13. She was both African-American and female, and she is remembered as an aviation pioneer for both groups. She grew up in Texas, moved to Chicago, and got interested in flying after her brothers returned from World War I. Failing to find anyone in Chicago who would teach flying to a black woman, she determined to go abroad to get training -- a daring move for that era. She moved to Paris, was accepted to aviation school, and on 15 June 1921 she received her pilot's license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. The certificate made her the world's first licensed black aviator. She returned to the United States and began a barnstorming career, appearing at airshows across the country. She died in 1926 while flight-testing an open-cockpit plane; her co-pilot lost control of the aircraft and in the ensuing dive she was tossed from the plane and plunged to her death.

14. He began as a stand-up comic and ended up as one of America's most beloved television stars. His comedy career was kick-started by a 1963 appearance on the Tonight Show, and he won multiple Grammy Awards for comedy recordings throughout the 1960s. He was particularly known for routines about childhood friends like Fat Albert and Old Weird Harold (both of whom later appeared in the 1970s cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids). In he starred with Robert Culp in the spoofy TV series I Spy, making him one of the few African-American stars on prime-time TV.

15. He (Feb. 7, 1817-Feb. 20, 1895) was an abolitionist, orator and writer who fought against slavery and for women's rights. He was the first African-American citizen appointed to high ranks in the U.S. government.

16. He (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was a writer, historian, leader and one of the founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). he was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was a gifted student who became a reporter for the New York Globe when he was 15 years old. He later attended Fisk University, then transferred to Harvard University; he was the first black to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He became a teacher and later studied the state of black people in the USA and around the world; he wrote many books.

17. He (Aug. 8, 1866 - March 9, 1955) was an American explorer and one of the first people to visit the North Pole. He was on most of Robert E. Peary’s expeditions, including the 1909 trip to the North Pole.

18. She (October 17, 1956 - ) was the first African-American woman in space. She is a medical doctor and a surgeon, with engineering experience. She flew on the space shuttle Endeavor (STS-47, Spacelab-J) as the Mission Specialist; the mission lifted off on September 12, 1992 and landed on September 20, 1992.

19. He was the dominant basketball player in the world during the 1990s. He won the NBA's Most Valuable Player award five times, and six times led the Chicago Bulls to the league championship. He led the Bulls to his first three championships came in 1991, 1992 and 1993 with superb shooting and playmaking and a competitive killer instinct. In October of 1993 he stunned his fans by retiring from basketball and beginning a professional baseball career, saying that playing baseball had been an early dream of his. He played the 1994 baseball season for the minor league Birmingham Barons. In March of 1995 he ended his baseball career and returned to the Bulls. With him, the Bulls won three more championships in 1996, 1997 and 1998. He retired from basketball in 1999. In the year 2000 he became a part owner and executive for the NBA's Washington Wizards. In 2001 he began considering another comeback as an NBA player, and that fall, at age 38, he returned once again to play for the Wizards. He played for two more full seasons, retiring again in April of 2003.

20. He (1929-1968) was a great man who worked for racial equality in the USA. He was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. After graduating from college and getting married, he became a minister and moved to Alabama. During the 1950's, he became active in the movement for civil rights and racial equality. He participated in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott and many other peaceful demonstrations that protested the unfair treatment of African-Americans. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Commemorating the life of a tremendously important leader, we celebrate him each year in January.

21. He (July 2, 1908 - Jan. 24, 1993) was the first African-American justice of the US Supreme Court. Hewas on the team of lawyers in the historic Supreme Court trial concerning school desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). As a result of this trial, the "separate but equal" doctrine in public education was overthrown. After a successful career as a lawyer and judge fighting for civil rights and women's rights, he was appointed to the high court in 1967 (by President Lyndon Baines Johnson). On the high court, he continued his fight for human rights until he retired on June 27, 1991.

22. He was an inventor who was fascinated by steam engines. As a mechanic in the early 1870's he noticed that machines had to be stopped every time they needed oil, which wasted a lot of time and was expensive. He invented a device to oil the machinery while it was working. It was soon used on engines, train locomotives, on Great Lake steamships, on ocean liners and on machinery in factories. His invention became so popular that no engine or machine was considered complete until it had a McCoy Lubricator. The phrase "The Real McCoy" soon caught on as a way of saying that people were getting the best equipment available.

23. He was a charismatic pitching star of the Negro Leagues who became a major league rookie in his forties. He began playing professionally for the Negro Leagues in 1923, during the era when blacks were blocked from playing in baseball's major leagues. He played for a variety of teams in the southern and midwestern states, usually not straying for long from Kansas City. He was known for his hard fastball and his crowd-pleasing showboating, including double and triple windups and his famous hesitation pitch. He was often hired to draw crowds as much as to win games. Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier in 1947, and the next year he joined the Cleveland Indians. He was 42 or 43 years old -- his age was never quite clear -- making him the oldest rookie in history.

24. She (February 4, 1913 - October 24, 2005) was a pivotal figure in the fight for civil rights. On December 1, 1955, a Montgomery, Alabama, bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white man. When she refused, she was fined and arrested. This incident prompted a city-wide bus boycott, which eventually resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on city buses is unconstitutional.

25. He became the first African-American Secretary of State in U.S. history when he took office in 2001. He was a career soldier who fought in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He rose through the ranks to become a general, then became national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan. He became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George Bush the elder, directing U.S. forces during the first Gulf War. He retired in 1993 and published his autobiography, My American Journey, in 1995. After years on the lecture circuit, he was chosen by George W. Bush to be Secretary of State in 2001.

26. She became U.S. Secretary of State in 2005. She had earlier served as National Security Advisor under President George W. Bush from 2001-2005. As a child, she was a gifted student and a prodigy on the piano, and she entered college at the age of 15 with the intention of becoming a concert pianist. Along the way she was influenced by political scientist Josef Korbel, the father of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She changed her plans and studied international politics, and by the early 1980s she was teaching at Stanford University and becoming a prominent public voice on international affairs. She also worked with the Pentagon and with the administration of George Bush the elder as an expert on foreign affairs.

27. He (January 31, 1912 - October 24, 1972) was the first black man allowed to play major league baseball. On April 11, 1947, he played his first major league baseball game (he played for the New York Dodgers in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees). He played with the Dodgers for 10 years. He played in six World Series and was the first African-American in the Baseball Hall of Fame (in 1962).

28. She sprinted to three gold medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, becoming the first woman from the United States to win three golds in one Olympics. She, an African-American, won the 100 meter dash and the 200 meter dash and anchored the winning 400 meter relay team. Born to a large, poor family in Tennessee, she battled polio, scarlet fever and pneumonia as a child and for a few years lost the use of one leg. By the time she was a teenager she was 5' 11" and an outstanding basketball player. She began sprinting with a team from Tennessee State University when she was still in high school, and earned a bronze medal as a member of a relay team in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne before earning triple gold four years later. In 1973 she was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame, and in 1974 she was named to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. Her 1977 autobiography was titled Wilma.

29. She (1797?-1883) was an American preacher who dedicated her life to fighting for for civil and human rights. She was born a slave in New York State, but was freed in 1827. After becoming a preacher, she campaigned for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights. During the US Civil War, she helped black Union soldiers obtain supplies and also worked as a counselor for the National Freedon Relief Association.

30. She (1820 - 1913) escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and traveled north. She then helped hundreds of other slaves flee to the north to freedom via the Underground Railroad. She helped John Brown recruit soldiers for his raid on Harpers Ferry (1859). She spied for the Union (in South Carolina) during the US Civil War. After the war, she lived in Auburn, New York, and founded the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged Negroes. She devoted her life to fighting slavery and championing the rights of women.

31. He (April 15?, 1856 - Nov. 15, 1915) was an orator, civil rights activist, professor, writer, and poet. He was born a slave in Virginia, but was freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (when it went into effect in the South, in 1865). He dedicated his life to education as a means of obtaining equality. He founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, and the National Negro Business League.

32. He won an Oscar as best actor for his role as a rogue cop in the 2001 film Training Day. It was his second Academy Award; he also won in 1989 as best supporting actor for the Civil War film Glory. He got his early break on TV, playing Dr. Phillip Chandler in the television drama St. Elsewhere (1982-88). He received critical praise for his role in the movie A Soldier's Story (1984), and was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for Cry Freedom (1987). He worked steadily throughout the 1990s in big-budget thrillers, comedies and dramas, including Philadelphia (1993), Crimson Tide (1995) and The Preacher's Wife (1996). His portrayal of boxer Ruben Carter earned him another Oscar nomination for the movie The Hurricane (1999).

33. He was an African American physician who made history by performing the first successful open heart surgery operation.

34. She is the most successful female talk show host in American TV history. She went into broadcasting in the early 1970s; after anchoring and reporting TV news in Nashville, Tennessee and Baltimore, Maryland, she landed a job on the morning show of A.M. Chicago in 1984. The next year she made her movie debut in The Color Purple and was nominated for an Oscar. In 1986 she launched a TV talk show which featured celebrity interviews and discussions of social issues. The show was a smash hit and within a decade she was one of the richest women in the United States. A feature of her show highlighting new books, became famous for its ability to create bestsellers. In 2000 she launched her own lifestyle magazine, O.

35. He Woods is the winner of 13 of golf's major championships and is the sport's biggest superstar since Jack Nicklaus. Before he became a grown-up celeb, he was a kiddie phenomenon: his father Earl allegedly introduced him to golf at age 9 months, and at age 2 the youngster made a now-famous appearance putting with Bob Hope on The Mike Douglas Show. He won three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles (1994-96), and in 1996 turned pro with a $40 million contract from Nike and a fame usually reserved for movie stars. At age 21, he became the youngest Masters champ and the first golfer since Jerry Pate in 1976 to win in the first major he played. He opened wide a door of society in becoming the first African American, as well as the first Asian American, to win a major.

36. While in prison for burglary, He adopted the Black Muslim faith and became a minister of the Nation of Islam upon his release in 1952. He was a charismatic advocate of black separatism who rejected Martin Luther King, Jr.’s policies of non-violence. He broke with the Nation of Islam in 1964. That same year he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and shortly afterwards he embraced orthodox Islam and took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He recanted some of his earlier more strident viewpoints on race, though he remained a staunch advocate of "black power." He was shot to death by a group of men while giving a speech in New York City in 1965