Unit 1
Prestigious historians, storytellers, and musicians who maintained and shared a community's history, traditions, and cultural practices?
Griots
This trade route lasted over 350 years (from the early 1500s to the mid 1800s), and more than 12.5 million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas. Of those who survived the journey, only about 5% (approximately 388,000) came directly from Africa to what became the United States.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
the rebuilding of Southern society after the war, centered around replacing a society built completely on slavery, with the attempt to introduce 4 million Black “new citizens” into Southern society.
Reconstruction
This large-scale movement saw millions of African Americans leave the rural South for cities in the North and West, seeking better jobs and escaping Jim Crow segregation between roughly 1916 and 1970.
Great Migration
This brought North African traders,scholars, and administrators who introduced Islam to the regionand facilitated its spread throughout West Africa?
Trans-Saharan Trade Routes/commerce
Beginning in 1791, this successful slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue led to the creation of the first independent Black republic in 1804
Haitian Revolution
Associated with the Harlem Renaissance, this early 20th-century movement encouraged African Americans to embrace racial pride, cultural expression, and a new sense of political assertiveness.
The New Negro Movement
This discriminatory practice, common in the mid-20th century United States, involved denying mortgages or charging higher loan rates to people in certain neighborhoods—often based on racial composition—while mapping those areas as “high risk” for investment. Explain what it was and how it worked.
Redlining
This country made contact with Portuguese traders, welcomed them into the royal court and converted to Christianity
Kingdom of Kongo
the Supreme Court’s decision that African Americans, enslaved and free, were not and could never become citizens of the U.S.
Dredd Scott Case
This system, common in the post–Civil War South, required farmers to work land owned by others in exchange for a share of the crops, often trapping them in cycles of debt.
Sharecropping
Founded in 1909, this organization has played a major role in fighting segregation, discrimination, and voting restrictions in the United States.
For full credit, explain what each letter in its acronym stands for.
the scattering or dispersion of people from their original homeland to various locations worldwide, often maintaining connections to their culture or heritage
Diaspora
These communities, formed by formerly enslaved people who escaped bondage in the Americas, often settled in remote areas and resisted colonial control.
Maroons
the internal conflict experienced by subordinated groups in an oppressive society.
Double Consciousness
Emerging in the 1960s as part of a broader push for racial pride and self-definition, this movement encouraged African Americans to embrace natural hairstyles, African heritage, and Black identity as a rejection of white beauty standards and racism. Explain what it was.
Black is Beautiful
The blending of different, often contradictory, beliefs, cultures, or philosophies into a new, distinct system?
Cultural Syncretism
In 1739, a group of enslaved Africans in South Carolina marched toward Spanish Florida seeking freedom, making this the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies.
Stono Rebellion
Founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914, this organization promoted global Black unity, economic independence, and pride in African heritage.
For full credit, explain what its acronym stands for and what the organization aimed to do.
UNIA
Universal Negro Improvement Association
During World War II, this campaign urged African Americans to fight for victory abroad against fascism while also fighting for victory at home against racism and segregation in the United States. Explain what it meant.
Double Victory Campaign (Double V)
Leader who engaged in 30 years of guerilla warfare against the Portuguese to maintain sovereignty and control of her kingdom. She participated in the slave trade to amass wealth and offered sanctuary for those who escaped Portuguese enslavement and joined her forces.
Queen Njinga/Nzinga
These three amendments, passed after the Civil War, each addressed a different aspect of freedom—one ended slavery, one defined citizenship and guaranteed equal protection, and one protected voting rights regardless of race.
For full credit, explain what each one did.
This term describes the late 19th to early 20th century period when race relations in the United States reached their lowest point, marked by segregation laws, disenfranchisement, and widespread violence against Black Americans.
The Nadir
These two related movements developed in the early to mid-20th century across the African diaspora. One began in Francophone intellectual circles and emphasized Black identity and pride in African heritage, while the other emerged in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Latin America, celebrating Afro-Caribbean culture, music, and lived experience.
Explain what each movement was.