African and African American History Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards generated from lecture transcript detailing West African kingdoms, slave trade history, and social/legal terms across the New World.

Armed auxiliaries

Black slaves shipped to Spanish colonies in the 1500s from Africa or Iberia who gained fame for participating in the conquest of the Americas.

Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable

A French-speaking Black man who erected the first building in a place that later came to be known as Chicago after France took control of the Mississippi Valley in the seventeenth century.

Bartolome de las Casas

The Catholic Friar who suggested the greater use of African slaves in 1517 due to Indian susceptibility to European diseases and harsh labor conditions, a position he later regretted.

Middle Passage

The name usually given to the voyage of African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

The flux

A disease or condition that slaves voyaging to the Americas were likely to suffer from.

Absentee landlordism

An important factor in the Caribbean that contributed to the development of practices destructive of the health and life of slaves.

Viceroyalty of New Granada

The region in continental Spanish America containing the largest concentration of Black people.

Negros de ganho

Urban slaves who stood on street corners ready to assist shoppers with packages or went house to house offering services to people without servants.

Maroons

Fugitive slaves who created their own communities in the mountainous interior of the Caribbean and continuously harassed planters by stealing, trading with slaves, and enticing them to escape.

Creoles

A term used to describe large numbers of slaves brought to North American colonies, meaning born in the New World.

Indentured servants

White servants who owed several years of service to whoever bought their time in labor in exchange for free passage to America.

Francis Payne

An individual who eventually secured his legal freedom by purchasing three male servants for his mistress.

John Casor

An individual sentenced in 1655 by the Northampton County Court to life in servitude to Anthony Johnson.

Code Noir of 1724

Louisiana legal regulations that sought to reduce slave manumissions and decreed branding, death, and mutilation as punishments for runaway slaves.

Bambuk

The region where the dominant source of gold was located at the height of Ghana's empire in the eleventh century.

Sunjata Keita

The legendary leader whose victory in a revolt against the Susu king Sumanguru in the early 13th century extended Mali's rule over the land once dominated by ancient Ghana.

Dyula

A group that utilized a complex system of weights and measures, as well as gold and cowry shells.

Queen Njinga

The first ruler of Ndongo who spent much of her reign justifying her claim to the throne and fighting off Portuguese encroachment on her land.

Nok people

An African group created to produce beautiful iron and copper weapons, textiles, and artistry.

Venture Smith

An African whose childhood ended when he was captured following an attack by a neighboring nation equipped with weapons by a foreign power.