Not a Trivial Pursuit
Following the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some Black Americans worried that people knew little about African American trials and triumphs. These parents, educators, and entrepreneurs developed games to teach children and adults about Black history and culture.
Afro-American History Mystery Game
In 1970 Shindana Toys released designer Carl Porter’s Afro-American History Mystery Game. Players spun a dial, answered Black history trivia questions, and completed jigsaw puzzles. Volume II of the game featured puzzles of Black women such as abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
We Dunit
Soft drink maker 7UP offered We Dunit, a 1971 card game, as a mail-in premium to teach people about Black icons such as abolitionist Frederick Douglass and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. The game was like charades, with players acting out the achievements of famous Black figures.
The Black Experience American History Game
In Carl Porter’s 1971 The Black Experience American History Game, players rolled dice, answered trivia, and advanced through history from slavery to the present, encountering, as its box notes, “frustrations” and “obstacles to progress…witnessed by all, but experienced by some.”
The Game of Roots
Inspired by Alex Haley’s 1976 novel Roots, teacher Gloria Hill created The Game of Roots (1978) for Black families to explore their ancestry while learning about human rights advocates. The Monopoly-style gameplay centered on earning money and a race to complete a family tree.
FUNDA
With a name reportedly translated from an African language to mean “instruct,” FUNDA set players on a path to scholastic excellence. This trivia game challenged players to acquire enough money, knowledge, and “college credits” to earn a Doctorate in Black Studies to win.
Black Quest
Inspired by the success of Trivial Pursuit and frustrated by the game’s lack of Black content, Julian Blair enlisted the help of his brother and a friend to make a game. In 1984 they created Black Quest to capitalize on the trivia craze and educate Americans about Black history.
Rise ’n Fly Trivia Board Game
Worried that her son didn’t know his history, teacher Linda West-Olds melded bid whist, a favorite card game in Black communities, with Black history trivia, to create Rise ‘n Fly in 1984. The game asked players to wager their grasp of history against their opponents.
“[My son] didn’t know much about civil rights and the struggle during the 60s, nothing about the Caribbean Islands or even Africa, itself. I started wondering if he wasn’t learning this in school, or at home—where?”
—Linda West-Olds New York Amsterdam News (1985)
In Search of Identity
In Search of Identity invited players to become influential Black figures by furnishing each with 10 cards containing a set of facts about their background for the game. To win players needed to guess the identity of their opponent before revealing their own.
“The civil rights movement helped Black people of our generation see themselves in a positive light…. And we hope Identity will help do the same for children today.”
—Lucy Holifield
Co-creator of In Search of Identity Atlanta Daily World (1984)
African-American Discovery
Designed as a classroom aid, African-American Discovery (1990) used card decks of Black history facts to educate players. To encourage everyone in classrooms to learn together, groups chose team captains to consult and strategize with team members before answering questions.
Black Americans of Achievement: The Game
Drawing its content from a successful 1989 book series, Black Americans of Achievement: The Game (1993) highlighted Black accomplishments. Burger King even sponsored a tournament for kids to promote the game as a good first step toward success and distinction.
Black by Design
Olmec Toys released the Black history memory game Black by Design in 1995. The game asked players to match illustrations of the traffic signal, gas mask, and other products on which Black inventors worked, and it encouraged them to learn more by reading an accompanying guide.
Black Card Revoked: Original Flavor
In Black Card Revoked (2015), questions like “Which hot sauce is the only one worth using?” framed Black cultural history as insider knowledge. The game inverted player’s expectations of Black history prowess by focusing on shared history and knowledge, with hilarious results.
Blerd Domination
The Blerd (a portmanteau of “Black,” and “nerd”) Domination (2018) card game approached Black history as another element of cultural knowledge. In this game, trivia questions about Black history stand beside queries on the likes of anime, television, movies, and music.
Urban Intellectuals Black History Flash Cards
Urban Intellectuals is proud to present volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of our Black History Flash Cards, designed to combat the miseducation and suppression of Black achievements around the globe.
Each volume contains 52 cards that give an insight into the history of Black people in the world before from general history to women, Science, Technology, Arts, Entertainment, pre-1492 and NEW Afro-Latino/Caribbean.
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