By KAREN CARSTENS
Journal staff writer

C. Arthur Blair has created "Black Quest" an Interactive CD-ROM game about black history.

C.Arthur Blair has the answers to a lot of questions. 

Who was the first Afican-American entertainer to become an international star? Josephine Baker.

Who invented the automatic oiling devices used in machinery such as automobiles and farm equipment? Eli McCoy. 

"That's where the phrase, the real McCoy,'comes from," Blair said.

The 46-year-old Cheverly resident has spent more than 20 years researching and cataloging black achievements and contributions to American history in his spare time, amassing a small personal library in the process. And he hopes to spark this love of black history in others with an interactive CD-ROM game he recently created.

Called "Black Quest: The Griot," the game features more than 1,100 entries in the form of multiple-choice questions and answers, spanning the Afican-American experience from 1492 to 1996 in such areas as art, inventions, sports, entertainment, the Civil War, slavery, and the civil rights movement.

Blair, who holds a bachelors degree in social work from the University of the District of Columbia and works in the health and mental hygiene department of a Baltimore hospital, said "Griot" refers to a storyteller in African folklore.

Many of Blair's most prized books, artifacts, and interesting tidbits of information come from elderly members of the black community, whom he finds endlessly fascinating. 

"You go to the sources that have come before you to know where to go to tomorrow," he said. 'That's why I named it the 'Griot.' "

And the myriad stories of blacks in North America" should not be viewed as separate, but part of the whole American experience, he added. I don't think there is something like black history," he said. 'I think there's American history, but black history has not been made enough of a part of the American history process.

"Blacks and whites themselves don't deal with the whole,"he said. "I tried to integrate more [in the game] than I had seen elsewhere so we could get a broad picture of the whole history."

That included mentioning whites who played a role in black history. For example, how many people know that all of the founders of the NAACP in 1909-with the exception of W .E.B. DuBois-were white?

Blair said he hopes 'Black Quest" will help instill a sense of pride and accomplishment in blacks, as discovering the contributions blacks have made has done for him.

He recalls the first book written by a black man that he read: the autobiography of Malcolm X, a class assignment. 

'I didn't know there were books by black people until I went to college," he said, his eyes widening at the thought that he once knew so little about blacks in America.

"At first, when you begin to read these books," he explained, "you get angry and upset.

"But," he said, "then you start realizing so much, that you look at it objectively ... that you - your ancestry - did survive. Then you get to the self-confidence stage." 

Blair said discovering black history has made him more comfortable with himself and with others, of any ethnic or racial background.

"I see learning history as a healing process," he said. 'The more African Americans who know about this, the less angry they would be ... the less of a 'less than' value they will feel."

As for whites, he said, "A lot of the time I think they don't understand and know that blacks contributed.

"Both [blacks and whites] are badly off, but from a different standpoint," he said.

"Black Quest" is intended for players of all ages. "Anyone with basic reading skills can play it," Blair said. 

The game is available at African Eye Collection on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest Washington, and will be sold at two Smithsonian Institution museum shops (the Museum of American History and the Arts and Industry Museum) in mid-March.

Blair also plans to make the game available on the Internet and at other area stores.

"It's an introduction," he said, "to the enormity of the African-American contribution to history ... even if you only pick out one person to read about, that would be the 'Quest.'"