AP African American Studies Flashcards

Flashcards on Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance

Who were the Ladinos?

Free and enslaved Africans familiar with Iberian culture who journeyed with Europeans in their earliest explorations of the Americas.

Who were the Atlantic Creoles?

Africans who worked as intermediaries before the predominance of chattel slavery, possessing familiarity with multiple languages, cultural norms, and commercial practices.

Who was Juan Garrido?

Kingdom of Kongo-born conquistador who, as a free man, explored present-day Florida during a Spanish expedition in 1513, becoming the first known African to arrive in North America.

Who was Estevanico (Esteban)?

Enslaved African healer from Morocco who was forced to work as an explorer and translator in Texas and the southwestern United States in 1528.

How long did the transatlantic slave trade last?

Over 350 years, from the early 1500s to the mid-1800s.

Approximately how many enslaved Africans were forcibly transported directly from Africa to what became the United States?

Approximately 388,000 (about 5 percent).

Which city was the center of United States slave trading, where forty-eight percent of all Africans brought to the United States directly from Africa landed?

Charleston, South Carolina.

Name the top five enslaving nations involved in the transatlantic slave trade.

Portugal, Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands.

Name the nine contemporary African regions from which enslaved Africans transported directly to mainland North America primarily came.

Senegambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Angola, and Mozambique.

Name West and Central African ethnic groups who were the ancestors of early generations of African Americans in mainland North America

Wolof, Akan, Igbo, and Yoruba.

Describe the conditions of the journey enslaved Africans endured during the first part of the transatlantic slave trade.

Captured and marched from interior states to the Atlantic coast with captives waiting in crowded, unsanitary dungeons.

Describe the conditions of the journey enslaved Africans endured during the second part of the transatlantic slave trade.

Traveling across the Atlantic Ocean, lasting up to three months. Africans were humiliated, beaten, tortured, and raped, and they suffered from widespread disease and malnourishment.

Describe the conditions of the journey enslaved Africans endured during the third part of the transatlantic slave trade.

Those who arrived at ports in the Americas were quarantined, resold, and transported domestically to distant locations of servitude.

How did the slave trade destabilize West African societies?

Increased monetary incentives to use violence to enslave neighboring societies, and domestic wars between kingdoms were at times exacerbated by the prevalence of firearms received from trade with Europeans.

What are slave narratives?

Historical accounts, literary works, and political texts designed to end slavery and the slave trade, demonstrate Black humanity, and advocate for the inclusion of people of African descent in American society.

How did African captives resist the trauma of deracination, commodification, and lifelong enslavement aboard slave ships?

By staging hunger strikes, attempting to jump overboard rather than live enslaved, and overcoming linguistic differences to form revolts.

Who led the revolt aboard the schooner La Amistad in 1839?

Sengbe Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinque).

What was the purpose of slave ship diagrams?

To maximize profit by transporting as many people as possible.

How did enslavers leveraged their power at slave auctions?

He leveraged the power of the law and white supremacist doctrine to assault the bodies, minds, and spirits of enslaved Africans and their descendants.

How did African American writers advance the causes of abolition and equality in their writings about slave auctions?

Sought to counter enslavers’ claims that slavery was a benign institution to advance the cause of abolition.

Name the states that were dominated by the slave-cotton system

South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

What was the "Second Middle Passage"?

The domestic slave trade from the upper South to the lower South, displacing over one million African Americans.

What crop's production, profits, and dependency increased due to the invention of the cotton gin?

Cotton.

What types of labor were performed by enslaved people of all ages and genders?

Domestic, agricultural, and skilled labor.

What institutions were some enslaved people bound to rather than to an individual person?

Churches, factories, and colleges.

For which crops was the task system used?

The cultivation of rice and indigo.

Name an example of a creole language that developed in the Carolina lowcountry as linguistic practices were maintained with less oversight

Gullah.

How did slavery foster economic interdependence between the North and South?

Cities that did not play a major role in the African slave trade nonetheless benefited from the economy created by slavery.

How did slavery deeply entrenched wealth disparities along America’s racial lines?

Denied wages to pass down to descendants and no legal right to accumulate property

How were slave codes described?

Race-based, inheritable, lifelong condition with restrictions on movement, congregation, possessing weapons, and wearing fine fabrics, among other activities.

How did the 1740 South Carolina slave code classify all Black people and the Indigenous communities that did not submit to the colonial government?

Nonsubjects.

What was the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott's freedom suit (1857)?

African Americans, enslaved and free, were not and could never become citizens of the United States.

Define Partus sequitur ventrem.

Defined a child’s legal status based on the status of their mother and held significant consequences for enslaved African Americans.

In the United States, race classification was determined based on _.

Hypodescent.

What are examples of African American forms of self-expression in art, music, and language that combine influences from diverse African cultures with local sources?

Musical instruments such as rattles from gourds, the banjo, and drums, and creole languages, such as Gullah.

Name American musical genres that enslaved people created distinct American musical genres which became the foundation of later.

Gospel and the blues.

What were spirituals also called?

Sorrow songs and jubilee songs.

What were the secret meanings that the lyrics of spirituals alert enslaved people to?

Warned enslaved people of opportunities to run away via the Underground Railroad.

How did Black people respond to the American Colonization Society's goal to exile the growing free Black population to Africa?

Emphasized their American identity by rejecting the term “African”.

Give examples of ethnonyms that African Americans used to describe themselves from the nineteenth century onward.

Afro-American, African American, and Black.

What was the asylum offered by Spanish Florida in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?

Offer freedom to enslaved people who converted to Catholicism.

Name the first sanctioned free Black town in what is now the United States.

Fort Mose.

Who led nearly 100 enslaved African Americans in the Stono Rebellion, setting fire to plantations and marching toward sanctuary in Spanish Florida?

Jemmy.

What did the legacy of the Haitian Revolution represent to Black political thinking?

Black freedom and sovereignty.

What did the cost France incurred while fighting Haitians prompt Napoleon to do?

Sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States.

Name revolts that were inspired in other African diasporic communities by the Haitian Revolution.

Louisiana Slave Revolt (1811) and the Malê Uprising of Muslim slaves (1835).

Give examples of daily forms of resistance demonstrated by enslaved and free African Americans.

Slowing work, breaking tools, stealing food, or attempting to run away.

What was the earliest known slave revolt in what is now United States territory?

Captured and brought to aid Spanish exploration along the South Carolina–Georgia coastline in 1526

Who led up to 500 enslaved people in the largest slave revolt on United States soil, known as the German Coast Uprising, or the Louisiana Revolt of 1811?

Charles Deslondes

In 1841, where did Madison Washington sail the slave brig Creole, after seizing the ship?

To the Bahamas.

Who was the first Black woman publish a political manifesto and one of the first American women to give a public address

Maria W. Stewart.

Give an example of where African Americans formed maroon communities in areas.

Great Dismal Swamp.

Who led a maroon community in wars against the Spanish in Panama in the sixteenth century and led maroons in Jamaica in the wars against the English in the eighteenth century?

Bayano and Queen Nanny.

Name Brazilian example of African cultural practices that still exist that were preserved in communities formed by the massive number of African-born people who arrived in Brazil

Capoeira and the congada.

Why did Brazil's free Black population grow significantly during the nineteenth century in Brazil?

The increased frequency of manumission (release from slavery)—a result of the influence of Iberian laws and the Catholic church.

How did thousands of free and enslaved African Americans from the North and South contribute during the United States Civil War?

Joined the Union war effort to advance the causes of abolition and Black citizenship.

Which was the last state to end slavery and is commemorated as Juneteenth?

Texas.

What was written into in the Emancipation Proclamation?

The recruitment of Black soldiers into the military.

Why did African American leaders in the nineteenth century embrace photography?

To counter stereotypes about Black people by portraying themselves as citizens worthy of dignity, respect, and equal rights.

How do many contemporary African American artists preserve the legacy of these leaders’ bravery and resistance?

By building on Black aesthetic traditions to integrate historical, religious, and gender perspectives in representations of African American leaders.

What laws did not apply to enslaved African American women?

Laws against rape did not apply to enslaved African American women

How did enslaved women used methods of resistance against sexual violence?

Some African American women resisted sexual abuse and the enslavement of their children through various methods, including fighting their attackers, using plants as abortion-inducing drugs, infanticide, and running away with their children when possible.

How did nineteenth century emigrationists aim to achieve the goal of Black freedom and self determination?

Advocated building new communities outside the United States as an alternative to the continuation of slavery and racial discrimination.

How did transatlantic abolitionism influenced anti-emigrationists’ political views about the potential for African Americans’ belonging in American society?

Anti-emigrationists believed abolition and racial equality reflected the nation’s ideals and that they would achieve the liberation, political representation, and full integration of African Americans in American society.

What were features of nineteenth-century radical resistance strategies promoted by Black activists to demand change?

Favored violence to address the daily urgency of living and dying under slavery

Define "Underground Railroad"

A covert network of Black and white abolitionists who provided transportation, shelter, and other resources to help enslaved people fleeing the South resettle in free territories in the United States North, Canada, and Mexico in the nineteenth century.

What were Harriet Tubman’s contributions to abolitionism and African Americans’ pursuit of freedom?

returned to the South at least 19 times, leading about 80 enslaved African Americans to freedom.

What is 'Underground Railroad'?

The term "Underground Railroad" refers to a covert network of Black and white abolitionists who provided transportation, shelter, and other resources to help enslaved people fleeing the South resettle in free territories in the United States North, Canada, and Mexico in the nineteenth century.