America 250
By Dr. Anne T. Sulton, Esq.
JA Senior International Correspondent
In 2016, the USA Congress established the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission. This Commission is charged with planning events celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the USA’s Declaration of Independence. A distinguished group of private citizens and elected and appointed government officials serve as Commissioners.
Nationwide, public agencies, private groups, and businesses are joining the celebration. Some are hosting elaborate events with live entertainment; others are sponsoring educational activities.
The Jackson Advocate is joining the fun. We are sponsoring a history trivia contest. Below are 15 questions and 10 answers. The remaining five questions comprise the “contest”. To win a prize, “contestants” must email the correct answers to all five questions to janews@thejacksonadvocate.com on or before midnight on July 7, 2026. The first five emails we receive with all five correct answers will be considered the winners and receive the prize of two tickets to: HBCU Labor Day Classic Battle of the Bands, September 6, 2026, at the Veterans Memorial Stadium. Winners will be notified by return email and announced in the Jackson Advocate newspaper and on our social media platforms.
The Declaration of Independence is a powerful document, serving as the launchpad for the promises embedded in the USA Constitution and the Amendments thereto. Following the full text of the Declaration of Independence, the 15 questions begin.
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Given the USA’s history since 1776, there are many thousands of trivia questions that can be asked. We choose 15 questions not often included in many historical trivia question sets posed by others. Our questions include those focusing on that part of the Declaration of Independence frequently cited by many, particularly those words proclaiming “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
1. In 1776, did President George Washington sign the Declaration of Independence?
2. In 1776, was the USA Constitution adopted at the same time the Declaration of Independence was signed.
3. In 1800, John Adams travelled from Philadelphia to Washington, DC via a carriage. How long did it take him to get there?
4. In what year did President Thomas Jefferson sign into law the Slave Trade Act prohibiting the importation of enslaved people?
5. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was passed by Congress, how many indigenous people – including Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw – were forcibly removed from their homelands in the Southeast to a designated “Indian Territory”?
6. In what year did Frederick Douglass deliver a speech entitled “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
7. Which Amendment to the USA Constitution, ratified in 1865, prohibited the enslavement of people?
8. In which year did Congress pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting Chinese immigration for 10 years?
9. When was the Nineteenth Amendment to the USA Constitution ratified giving women the right to vote?
10. Which USA president desegregated the USA’s armed forces in 1948?
11. Which lawyer served as the NAACP’s first general counsel and helped pave the way for the U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting school segregation in 1954?
12. When was the Voting Rights Act signed into law?
13. In 1988, which USA president signed into law the Civil Liberties Act providing a formal presidential apology and a $20,000 reparations check to each of the approximately 82,000 surviving Japanese Americans forced into what were called “relocation centers” or “internment camps” during World War II?
14. The American Bison was officially designated as the “National Mammal of the United States”. Which president did this and when did he so do?
15. When the Obama Presidential Center, located in Chicago, opened in June 2026, among the displays is a worker appreciation wall containing the names of local persons helping to design and construct the Center. How many names are on this wall?
Trivia Answers
1. No.
2. No.
3. 8 days.
4. 1807.
5. Estimated 100,000.
6. 1852.
7. Thirteenth Amendment.
8. 1882.
9. 1920.
10. President Harry S. Truman.
