AP African American Studies: Unit 1 Origins of the African Diaspora

Flashcards covering the essential vocabulary and concepts for AP African American Studies Unit 1, including early civilizations, trade networks, and the transition to the Atlantic slave trade.

African American studies

An interdisciplinary approach combined with scholarly inquiry used to analyze the history, culture, and contributions of people of African descent in the U.S. and throughout the African Diaspora.

Black Campus movement ($1965–1972$)

A period where hundreds of thousands of students led protests at over $1,000$ colleges nationwide demanding greater opportunities to study Black history and better support for Black students and faculty.

Birthplace of humanity

A description of Africa affirming its status as the ancestral home of all humans and the origin of developments in fields such as arts, architecture, and technology.

Interdisciplinary approach

A method of study that incorporates multiple academic disciplines to dispel notions of an undocumented African history and affirm its complex, globally connected societies.

Climate zones of Africa

The five primary geographic regions: desert (Sahara), semiarid (Sahel), savanna grasslands, tropical rainforests, and the Mediterranean zone.

Sahel and Savanna population centers

Regions where population centers emerged due to major water routes for trade, fertile land for agriculture, and their role in connecting northern desert communities to southern tropical regions.

Bantu Expansion

A series of migrations of West and Central African peoples from $1500 \text{ BCE}$ to $500 \text{ CE}$ triggered by technological and agricultural innovations.

Bantu linguistic family

A group of hundreds of languages spoken throughout West, Central, and Southern Africa, including Xhosa, Swahili, Kikongo, and Zulu.

Nubia (Kush)

An ancient society along the Nile River that was Egypt's source of gold and whose rulers, the Black Pharaohs, established the $25\text{th}$ dynasty in Egypt around $750 \text{ BCE}$.

Aksumite Empire

An empire in present-day Eritrea and Ethiopia that emerged around $100 \text{ BCE}$, developed its own currency and script (Ge’ez), and became the first African society to adopt Christianity.

Nok society

One of the earliest iron-working societies of West Africa ($500 \text{ BCE}$), known for terracotta sculptures which are the most ancient evidence of a complex, settled society in sub-Saharan Africa.

King Ezana

The leader under whom the Aksumite Empire became the first African society to adopt Christianity.

Sudanic Empires

The Sahelian empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai that flourished from the $7\text{th}$ to the $16\text{th}$ century, known for their gold mines and trans-Saharan trade.

Mansa Musa

A wealthy $14\text{th}$ century ruler of the Mali Empire whose hajj in $1324$ attracted global interest in Mali's gold and established it as a center of learning.

Timbuktu

A trading city in Mali that became a center of learning, housing a book trade, university, and community of astronomers and mathematicians.

Griots

Prestigious West African historians, storytellers, and musicians who preserve a community’s history and cultural practices through oral tradition.

Religious Syncretism

The blending of introduced faiths like Islam or Christianity with indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmologies.

Veneration of ancestors

A West African spiritual practice where the wisdom of past ancestors is honored and sought for guidance through burial sites or shrines.

Divination

The practice of seeking a spiritual leader, such as a Babalawo in Yoruba culture, to predict the future through supernatural means like reading palm nuts.

Great Zimbabwe

A Southern African kingdom ($12\text{th}$–$15\text{th}$ century) known for large stone architecture, including the Great Enclosure and a conical tower used as a granary.

Swahili Coast

A coastal region from Somalia to Mozambique united by Islam and the Swahili language (a Bantu lingua franca) that linked Africa to trade with Arab, Persian, and Indian communities.

Wolof Empire

A West African kingdom in modern Senegal that was one of the first to sustain complex trade and diplomatic relations with Portugal starting by $1455$.

Elmina

A location in modern Ghana (originally called El Mina or 'The Mine') that served as Portugal's first major entrance into the African gold trade with the Akan people.

Kingdom of Benin (Ubini)

A powerful West African empire with massive defensive walls and a military over $100,000$, which traded ivory and captives but later shut down Portuguese access to the slave trade in $1514$.

São Tomé

An uninhabited island colonized by Portugal in $1485$ where they developed a sugar production system based on racialized slavery and massive plantations.

Racialized slavery

A system of violent labor camps established in São Tomé and the Americas for producing agricultural cash crops for export, based on the human trafficking of West Africans.

Kingdom of Kongo

A West Central African empire that voluntarily converted to Roman Catholicism in $1491$ to strengthen trade ties with Portugal.

Nzinga Mbemba (Afonso I)

The King of Kongo who converted to Christianity and eventually wrote to the Portuguese king regarding the inability to limit the growing volume of the slave trade.

Extended kinship ties

Social norms involving obligations toward blood relatives that formed the basis for many political alliances in West and Central African societies.

Queen Mother Idia

The first iyoba of Benin who served as a political advisor and whose ivory mask became the symbol for FESTAC in $1977$.

Queen Njinga

The queen of Ndongo-Matamba who led $30 \text{ years}$ of guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese to maintain her kingdom's sovereignty.