AAS 166: Black Studies Midterm Study Guide

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core missions, historical periods, major thinkers, political traditions, and constitutional developments from the AAS 166 Black Studies study guide.

Descriptive Mission

The mission of Black Studies that documents Black history, culture, society, and experience from perspectives taking Black life seriously as a starting point, recovering information omitted from dominant accounts.

Corrective Mission

The mission of Black Studies that challenges racist stereotypes, omissions, and distorted interpretations in mainstream scholarship and culture, disputing claims that Black people or African cultures are inferior.

Prescriptive Mission

The mission of Black Studies that uses historical and social knowledge to propose practical steps toward empowerment, reform, and social transformation.

Academic Excellence and Social Responsibility

Manning Marable believed that Black studies should combine strong, careful research with real-world action to help Black communities.

Nascent Period (18th Century–1865)

The developmental phase of Black intellectual work fostered within early community, educational, and religious institutions such as African Free Schools, the African Free Society, and Black churches led by figures like Richard Allen and Absalom Jones.

Conceptual Period (Reconstruction through the 1940s)

Following the Civil War, HBCUs and similar institutions supported generations of Black researchers across different fields, despite having little funding and weak political protection.

Institutional Period (Late 1960s)

The era driven by student activism and Black freedom movements that established formal Black Studies departments at predominantly white universities, beginning at San Francisco State University in 1968.

Temple University Doctoral Program (1988)

The first doctoral program in Black Studies identified in the materials, marking the field's later institutional development and academic infrastructure expansion.

Organic Intellectuals

Individuals such as J. A. Rogers, Arthur Schomburg, and C. L. R. James who produce and share critical knowledge with Black audiences through writing, collections, and public scholarship without necessarily receiving formal university training.

The Philadelphia Negro (1899)

What: First empirical sociological study of an urban Black community in the U.S.

• Method: Door-to-door surveys, 5,000+ interviews, and statistical mapping in Philadelphia's Seventh Ward (with Isabel Eaton).

• Core Argument: Poverty, crime, and poor health among Black residents stem from systemic racism, segregation, and job exclusion—not biological or moral flaws.

• Key Insight: Showed the Black community was not a monolith, revealing distinct social and economic classes.

• Impact: Pioneered modern, data-driven urban sociology.

Monroe Work

• First African American to publish in the American Journal of Sociology (1900) and founding director of the Department of Records and Research at the Tuskegee Institute (1908).

• Bridge Figure: Collaborated closely with both W. E. B. Du Bois (in the Niagara Movement) and Booker T. Washington (at Tuskegee), using empirical data to advance Black social progress.

• Major Works: Compiled the annual Negro Year Book (an encyclopedia of Black life and statistics) and A Bibliography of the Negro in Africa and America (1928), cataloging 17,000 references.

• Activism Through Data: Meticulously documented U.S. lynchings to fuel anti-lynching campaigns and co-founded National Negro Health Week to combat public health disparities.

• Impact: Proved that rigorous, objective record-keeping could dismantle racist narratives and preserve Black history during the Jim Crow era.

Carter G. Woodson

Historian who established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, founded the Journal of Negro History in 1916, and created public-facing resources to circulate Black history widely.

Charles S. Johnson

A scholar who researched Black social development and political economy and founded the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University in 1944.

Africana Studies

A naming framework for the field that emphasizes the interconnected study of people of African descent globally, linking continental African and diasporic histories rather than treating them separately.

Afrocentricity

An intellectual perspective associated with Molefi Asante and Maulana Karenga that positions African people as active agents and subjects of their own history, using Africa as the central interpretive starting point.

Cultural Nationalism

A Black Power tendency focused on cultural and psychological renewal, building cultural institutions, and reclaiming African heritage and values, exemplified by Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Kwanzaa.

Revolutionary Nationalism

A Black Power tendency focused on transforming political and economic structures—including capitalism, imperialism, and institutional racism—exemplified by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and the Black Panther Party.

Black Power

A political framework articulated by Stokely Carmichael emphasizing collective self-definition, independent political and economic organizing, systemic critique of capitalism and imperialism, and rejection of passive integration.

Lowndes County Freedom Organization

An independent political party in Alabama organized to build autonomous Black political power, adopting the Black Panther emblem to symbolize strength and dignity.

David Walker's Appeal (1829)

An abolitionist pamphlet by David Walker that used Christianity and natural rights to condemn slavery, oppose colonization and quietism, and urge Black unity, education, and readiness to resist.

Quietism

The passive resignation to oppressive circumstances as unavoidable, an attitude strongly condemned by abolitionist David Walker.

Henry Highland Garnet

An abolitionist who delivered the 1843 'Address to the Slaves of the United States,' issuing an urgent call for enslaved people to directly and publicly resist their enslavement to claim their freedom.

Abolition of the International Slave Trade (1807/1808)

Legislative bans passed by Great Britain in 1807 and the United States in 1808 prohibiting transatlantic importation of enslaved persons, which ended legal external importation while domestic slave trading continued to expand.

La Amistad Case (1839)

A Supreme Court legal case in which illegally captured Africans who revolted aboard a Spanish schooner were defended by John Quincy Adams and recognized as free people with a natural right to resist unlawful enslavement.

Natural Rights

Fundamental rights understood to belong inherently to human beings by virtue of their humanity, rather than privileges granted or revoked by governments.

Ring Shout

An African American religious and cultural practice among enslaved communities involving circular rhythmic movement, singing, clapping, and call-and-response to maintain community endurance and African spiritual traditions.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Investigative journalist and anti-lynching activist who demonstrated through documented evidence that lynching was an economic and political tool to terrorize Black communities and defend white supremacy, rather than a response to criminal assaults.

Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1919)

A federal legislative proposal aimed at prosecuting lynching as a national crime, which failed to become law after being filibustered in the U.S. Senate.

National Association of Colored Women (NACW)

A national organization founded in 1896 under the motto 'Lifting as we climb,' dedicated to mutual aid, community welfare, education, and defending Black women against racial and sexual violence.

Reconstruction (1865–1877)

The post-Civil War era in which former Confederate states were reintegrated into the Union and formerly enslaved people secured constitutional citizenship and civil rights, which were subsequently undermined by disfranchisement and racial terror.

13th Amendment (1865)

The constitutional amendment that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude across the United States, except as punishment for a crime whereof the party has been duly convicted.

14th Amendment (1868)

The constitutional amendment that established birthright citizenship in the United States and guaranteed all persons equal protection under the law and due process.

15th Amendment (1870)

The constitutional amendment prohibiting the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Sharecropping

An agricultural arrangement where tenant farmers cultivated land owned by a landlord in return for a share of the crop, frequently resulting in chronic debt, economic dependence, and restricted mobility.

Booker T. Washington's Educational Model

An educational strategy centered at the Tuskegee Institute emphasizing vocational, agricultural, and industrial training and economic self-reliance, while accommodating social and political inequalities in the short term.

Talented Tenth

W.E.B. Du Bois's concept advocating broad liberal arts, humanities, and scientific education for an educated cadre of Black leaders to directly challenge racial discrimination and pursue full political rights.

Berlin Conference (1884–1885)

A diplomatic summit where European powers established rules to partition the African continent without African representation, disregarding local political boundaries and undermining African sovereignty.

Pan-Africanism

A political and intellectual movement linking the struggles, liberation, and shared interests of people of African descent worldwide to the freedom and sovereignty of the African continent.