Mary Church Terrell
DC-born organizer, charter member of the NAACP, and one of the first Black women to earn a college degree in the United States. A native of the city we still gather in.
— honored 2017, 2022
Why
we keep showing up.
A decade ago, we pulled chairs together in a living room and started naming names. Ten years later, the questions only get better — because the women whose stories we should already know are still waiting to be remembered.
- Founded
- March 2015 — a living room in Washington, DC
- Hosted by
- Liberation in Action & the Resonance Network
- Held every
- Women's History Month, without fail
A short manifesto
Remembrance is a practice, not a paragraph.
The dominant story leaves a lot of women out. Not by accident — by architecture. Textbooks shorten them. Headlines skip them. The "great names" list is the one you can already recite, while the women who built the scaffolding underneath rarely make it into a single line of copy.
Trivia Night is our small rebellion against that. One night a year, we sit together, ask harder questions, and read the names aloud — the organizers, the scientists, the playwrights, the midwives, the printers, the strike captains, the aunties — the women whose work made the work we do today possible.
It's a celebration, not a lecture. It is loud, generous, full of laughter, and refuses to be solemn. But underneath the rounds and the prize bags is a serious claim: memory is a form of justice. Forgetting is never neutral. Remembering, on purpose, on a Friday in March, with friends — that's the work.
Hosted with care by Liberation in Action
Why we gather
Five reasons we put on our coats, cross the city, and show up every March.
-
01
To say the names out loud.
A name unspoken stays unknown. Each round of trivia is a chance for a name to land in a new ear — a midwife in 1880s Mississippi, a chemist in 1940s Brooklyn, an organizer in 1970s DC — and to travel home in someone else's pocket.
-
02
To make Women's History Month local.
March deserves more than a hashtag. We turn the month into a room — a real room, with real people, in a real neighborhood in DC — and let the celebration take a body. Belonging happens face to face.
-
03
To fund the work that continues it.
One hundred percent of profits are routed to feminist movement work through the Resonance Network. Remembrance without resourcing is nostalgia. We refuse the nostalgia.
-
04
To welcome the first-timer.
Movements grow at the edges. Every year a handful of people walk in alone, get paired into a team, and walk out with five new friends and a list of women they want to read about on Monday. That's the point.
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05
To prove that joy is also the work.
The struggle is real. So is the laughter. Trivia Night insists that pleasure, community, and a sharp competitive streak are not distractions from liberation — they are the rehearsal for it.
We are not interested in being inspired by women's lives in the abstract. We are interested in knowing them by name, and in building the world they were trying to make.Founding statement — Liberation in Action, 2015
A few of the women we've honored
Ten years of names on the board.
A small sample of the women whose stories have shown up in trivia rounds since 2015. The full list is longer — and growing — every year.
Dolores Huerta
Co-founder of the United Farm Workers, architect of the boycott as a tool of moral pressure, and the voice behind a phrase you've probably already said today: sí, se puede.
— honored 2018Henrietta Lacks
A young mother from Halifax County, Virginia whose cells became the most-used cell line in medical history — taken without her consent, and finally named in the work she made possible.
— honored 2019Audre Lorde
Caribbean-American poet, librarian, and theorist who taught us that silence will not protect us — and that self-care, in a hostile world, is a political act.
— honored 2016, 2020Katherine Johnson
The NASA mathematician whose hand-calculated trajectories carried John Glenn into orbit. The astronauts trusted her arithmetic over the machines.
— honored 2021Bessie Smith
The Empress of the Blues, who out-earned every male performer in vaudeville at her peak and shaped the vocal grammar that almost every American singer borrows from to this day.
— honored 2023
Where the money goes
Every ticket is a small investment in feminist movement work.
Trivia Night is a fundraiser, but not in the polite, gala sense of the word. The room is not the work — the room is the means. Once the lights go up and the leftover snacks are split, 100% of profits are routed to feminist organizing through the Resonance Network.
Across the decade, that has meant healing-justice retreats, mutual-aid grants for women fleeing violence, organizer stipends, and seed funding for projects that institutional philanthropy has been slow to back.
A decade in chapters
Ten Marches, ten reasons.
The night has changed shape across the years — from a living room of twelve, to a sanctuary of two hundred — but the reason has stayed the same.
'15
The living room.
Twelve friends, a folding table, three rounds, one rule: bring a woman's name nobody at the table has heard.
'17
Outgrew the couch.
Moved into a neighborhood café in Brookland. Forty seats. The first year someone brought a printed program.
'19
The first themed rounds.
Suffrage, science, sport, and song. The structure that became the night's signature was born here.
'21
Held the line, online.
Pandemic year. We held trivia over video, raised funds for women's mutual-aid networks, and kept the tradition alive.
'24
The tenth annual.
Two hundred seats, four rounds, one decade. The questions get better. So does the company.
If any of this resonates
Bring a friend. Bring a name. We'll see you March 8.
The night is built for people who already know they want to be there, and for people who are just hearing about us now. There's a seat for both. Reserve a table or come solo — we'll pair you up at the door.