Top Terms
This three-part journey took enslaved Africans from their homes, across the Atlantic Ocean, and to their final destination in the Americas.
What is the Transatlantic Slave Trade?
A legendary "conductor" on the Underground Railroad who returned to the South 19 times to lead others to freedom.
Who is Harriet Tubman?
This holiday celebrates June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed they were free.
What is Juneteenth?
This 1857 Supreme Court decision ruled that African Americans were not citizens and had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect".
What is the Dred Scott decision?
Many enslaved Africans brought this musical instrument to the Americas, which was inspired by West African stringed instruments.
What is the Banjo?
The middle leg of the journey across the Atlantic Ocean, which about 15% of captive Africans did not survive.
What is the middle passage?
A formerly enslaved man who became a famous abolitionist, orator, and author of several influential narratives. He had a personal relationship with Abraham Lincoln and wrote about his years as a slave.
Frederick Douglass
This 1739 event in South Carolina was one of the largest rebellions by enslaved people in the British colonies.
What is the Stono Rebellion?
This 1863 presidential order legally freed enslaved people in the states that were in rebellion against the Union.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
Enslaved people used this type of craft as a medium for storytelling, memory keeping, and family history.
What is quilt-making?
This specific system of labor involved enslaved people working in large groups under the strict supervision of an overseer.
What is the Gang System?
This free man from the Kingdom of Kongo was the first known African to arrive in North America in 1513.
Who is Juan Garrido?
This successful 1791 revolution led to the creation of the first free Black republic in the world.
What is the Haitian Revolution?
These laws were passed by individual colonies and states to define the status of enslaved people and take away their rights.
What are Slave Codes?
Enslaved people often used these songs to send secret messages or alerts about plans to escape.
What are Spirituals?
These are independent communities formed by self-emancipated people who escaped to remote areas like the Great Dismal Swamp.
What are Maroon societies?
She was the first enslaved African American woman to publish her own life narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Who is Harriet Jacobs?
During this 1839 event, captive Africans took control of a ship and eventually won their freedom in a famous U.S. court case.
What is the Amistad Rebellion?
Following the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina passed a new code in 1740 that prohibited enslaved people from doing what specific activities? (I'll accept any...)
What is gathering, drumming, or learning to read?
This specialized skill brought from Africa was highly valued by enslavers for the cultivation of crops like rice.
What is basket weaving (or rice cultivation)?
This term refers to a "common language," such as Gullah, created by blending West African and European languages to communicate across cultures.
What is a lingua franca (or creole language)?
This formerly enslaved Senegambian leader founded Fort Mose, the first sanctioned free Black town in what is now the U.S.
Who is Francisco Menéndez?
This settlement in Spanish Florida offered freedom to enslaved people who escaped the British colonies and converted to Catholicism.
What is Fort Mose (or St. Augustine)?
hese federal laws allowed for the recapture of enslaved people who had escaped to "free" states in the North.
What are the Fugitive Slave Acts?
This unique language, still spoken today on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, blends English with various West African languages.
What is Gullah (or Geechee)?