African Origins
What language group spread across Africa due to population growth and agriculture?
What is bantu?
The transatlantic journey that enslaved Africans endured across the ocean
What is the Middle Passage?
It counted enslaved people as 3/5 of a person for representation in Congress
What was the Three-Fifths Compromise?
What instrument originated in Africa and became central to early American music?
Banjo
What was the primary export of Great Zimbabwe?
Gold
The wealthy emperor of Mali known for his 1324 hajj pilgrimage
Who is Mansa Musa?
What was the largest forced migration in U.S. history?
The Second Middle Passage
What Supreme Court case declared Black people were not U.S. citizens?
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
A religious song expressing hope, often with coded messages
What is a spiritual, and what was its function during slavery?
What coastal trade region connected Africa to Arab, Indian, and Chinese markets?
Swahili Coast
Oral historians and cultural storytellers in Western African Societies
What are Griots?
What is one way enslaved Africans resisted during the Middle Passage?
Revolts, hunger strikes, or jumping overboard
What was the purpose of slave codes in colonial and U.S. law?
To control and limit the rights of enslaved people and free Blacks
What musical elements from West Africa influenced spirituals?
Call-and-response, improvisation, rhythm
What made chattel slavery different from earlier forms of slavery in human history?
It was hereditary, lifelong, and based on race.
What East African empire was the first to adopt Christianity and use the Ge’ez script?
What is Aksum (or Aksumite Empire)
What was the significance of the Amistad case?
Enslaved Africans successfully revolted and won freedom in U.S. courts.
What pseudoscientific idea was created to justify slavery? (A social construct)
Race
What are Africa’s five major climate zones?
Desert, semiarid, savanna, rainforest, Mediterranean
What % of enslaved Africans were transported directly to the U.S.?
About 5% (around 388,000)
What are the three Sudanic empires of West Africa?
What ancient West African city became famous for Islamic learning?
Ghana, Mali, and Songhai
Timbuktu
What term describes the legal system that made slavery inheritable through the mother?
What is Partus sequitur ventrem?
Anyone with African ancestry was classified as Black
What is the “one-drop rule”?
It combines multiple academic fields like history, sociology, art, and politics.
What does “interdisciplinary” mean in African American Studies?
A system where enslaved people are treated as property for life.
What is chattel slavery?