African American Studies Practice Flashcards

A set of vocabulary flashcards based on the lecture notes covering African American history, social justice frameworks, and key cultural movements.

Intersectionality

A term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to understand how different forms of inequality and disadvantages, such as racism, sexism, or classism, can overlap and combine.

Linguistic Appropriation

When a dominant group adopts linguistic elements from a minority or marginalized group, often without understanding or respecting the original context.

African American Studies

An interdisciplinary field using scholarly inquiry from history, literature, art, and sociology to analyze the history, culture, and contributions of people of African descent.

The Black Campus Movement (1965–1972)

A period inspired by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements where Black students at over 1,000 colleges protested for the creation of departments and courses centering their history.

Bantu Expansion

A series of migrations starting around 1500 BCE caused by technological and agricultural innovations that spread culture and the Bantu linguistic family across Africa.

Aksumite Empire

A maritime trade power that rose around 100 BCE in modern-day Ethiopia/Eritrea, developed the Ge'ez script, and was the first major African society to adopt Christianity.

Nok Society

One of the earliest iron-working societies in West Africa (500 BCE) famous for sophisticated terracotta sculptures.

Sudanic Empires

The sequence of powerful West African empires—Ghana, Mali, and Songhai—that grew wealthy by controlling trans-Saharan trade routes for gold and salt.

Mansa Musa

The ruler of the Mali Empire whose 1324 hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca showcased his immense gold wealth to the Mediterranean world.

Griots

Prestigious historians, musicians, and living archives in Mande societies who preserve community history through oral performances such as the Epic of Sundiata.

Syncretism

The process where African people blended elements of new faiths like Islam or Christianity with indigenous spiritual beliefs.

Great Zimbabwe

A kingdom in Southern Africa (12th–15th c.) known for its massive stone architecture and wealth derived from gold, ivory, and cattle.

Chattel Slavery

A brutal form of slavery where individuals are legally defined as property for life and their status is inherited by their children.

Middle Passage

The horrific 1-3 month journey across the Atlantic for enslaved Africans, characterized by high mortality rates due to disease and violence.

Partus Sequitur Ventrem

A 1662 Virginia law stating that a child’s legal status followed that of the mother, making slavery a hereditary condition.

Spirituals

Songs that fused African musical elements with Christian themes, often containing double meanings to communicate escape plans for the Underground Railroad.

Fort Mose

The first sanctioned free Black settlement in what is now the United States, founded in 1738 in Spanish Florida.

Stono Rebellion (1739)

A rebellion led by an enslaved Angolan named Jemmy that resulted in the enactment of the harsh South Carolina Slave Code of 1740.

Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)

The only successful enslaved-led revolt that overthrew a colonial government to create a Black republic.

Dred Scott Decision (1857)

A Supreme Court ruling declaring that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could never be citizens of the United States.

Juneteenth

Commemorated on June 19, 1865, it marks the day Union General Gordon Granger informed enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, that they were free.

14th Amendment (1868)

An amendment that established birthright citizenship and guaranteed 'equal protection of the laws,' overturning the Dred Scott decision.

Special Field Order No. 15

The promise of '40 acres and a mule' intended to redistribute land to formerly enslaved people, which was later revoked by President Andrew Johnson.

Convict Leasing

A system that exploited the 13th Amendment's exception clause by leasing imprisoned Black men to private corporations to work without pay.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

The Supreme Court decision that constitutionalized the 'separate but equal' doctrine and provided the legal foundation for Jim Crow.

Double Consciousness

A concept by W.E.B. Du Bois describing the psychological struggle of viewing oneself through the eyes of a hostile white society.

The Great Migration

The movement of six million African Americans from the rural South to the urban North and West between 1910 and 1970.

Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

A mass movement founded by Marcus Garvey that advocated for Black Nationalism, economic self-sufficiency, and Pan-Africanism.

Négritude

A literary and political movement among French-speaking Black intellectuals that rejected cultural assimilation and affirmed African heritage.

Double V Campaign

A WWII-era campaign calling for victory against fascism abroad and victory against racism at home.

Redlining

A mechanism of de facto segregation where the Federal Housing Administration deemed Black neighborhoods 'hazardous' for investment, barring them from federal mortgage loans.

SNCC

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which utilized 'group-centered leadership' and nonviolent direct action under the guidance of Ella Baker.

Black Arts Movement (BAM)

A movement from 1965-1975 that insisted Black art must be politically revolutionary and created for a Black audience.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense

Founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, this organization practiced armed self-defense and established community survival programs.

Afrofuturism

A cultural and artistic movement that combines science fiction and technology to imagine futures where Black identity is central and liberated.