In December 2016, President Barack Obama pardoned someone from my old neighborhood, the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sala Udin was an early Freedom Rider, taking African Americans to register to vote in Southern states. Udin was arrested for speeding in Kentucky; an unloaded shotgun and a jug of moonshine were found in his car. Sala went on to become a leading political figure in Pittsburgh and 44 years after his conviction, he was pardoned by the president. Sala said, in later years, that he carried the shotgun because he would rather have been arrested for carrying it than be without it when the Klan came to get him. When President Obama pardoned Sala, I called my sister and gently berated her: “You didn’t tell me that your boyfriend was a Freedom Rider!” She laughed: “You didn’t ask.”
Years ago, I came into possession of a game called “Brain Quest: Black History.” I’m not sure how long I’ve had it; the latest copyright is 2001, so it must have been some time after that year. I don’t remember playing the game with my oldest grandchildren, or anyone else. I found it in a drawer, and now I propose that we all play. We will start with questions, “Q’s” and end with answers, “A’s.”
Q1: Which African country was one of the founding members of the United Nations?
Q2: In 1857, did the U.S. Supreme Court decide that Dred Scott of Missouri was a slave or a free man?
Q3: Why was the April 1944 ruling in Smith v. Allwright beneficial to black voters?
Q4: What great 19th-century speaker declared that education means “light and liberty?”
Q5: Name the Black mathematician who was a surveyor on the team that planned the District of Columbia.
Q6: How did the so-called “grandfather clause” in state constitutions affect African Americans?
Q7: Name the scientist whose research led to an efficient method of storing large quantities of blood in “blood banks.”
A1: Liberia, in 1945. Liberia was the first Black republic in Africa.
A2: A slave and therefore, not a citizen, though he had resided in free territory and in free Illinois.
A3: It held that states cannot limit a person’s right to vote in primary elections.
A4: Frederick Douglass, in a speech at Storer College in 1880.
A5: Benjamin Banneker, in 1790. The 10-mile square was originally known as Federal Territory.
A6: It limited their voting rights.
A7: Charles Drew, in the 1930s. Drew went on to become the chief surgeon at Freedmen’s Hospital.
Thanks for playing.