Unit 2 (P1) Vocab

Ladinos

Hispanicized Africans who worked as intermediaries for the Spanish and Portuguese explorers.

Atlantic Creoles

A term used to describe Africans who worked as intermediaries before the predominance of chattel slavery, who were utilized specifically due to their familiarity with multiple languages, cultural norms, and commercial practices.

Chattel Slavery

Form of slavery common in the US, that allowed for the selling of people as property.

Conquistadors

Spanish/Portuguese Conquerors who led the way for colonization in the Americas

Juan Garrido

An African Conquistador, born in the Kingdom of Kongo but resident of Lisbon, who was the first free African to arrive in North America.

Estevanico

Enslaved healer from Morocco who was forced to work as an explorer and translator in Texas, for the Spanish.

Slave Coast

The region of West Africa, River Volta in present day Ghana to the Lagos Channel, where most enslaved people were forced into slavery.

Middle Passage

The horrendous journey across the Atlantic Ocean, lasted up to 3 months, that brought enslaved peoples from African to the Americas.

Slave Narratives

Firsthand historical accounts, literary works, and political texts that aimed to end slavery and the slave trade, by demonstrating Black humanity, and advocating for the inclusion of people of African descent into American society.

Slave Ship Diagram

Graphics that displayed the systematic arrangements of captives on slave ships.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

The institution, that lasted over 350 years, which forcibly brought roughly 12.5 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the Americas.

Commodification

The action of treating something as a mere commodity, or good to make a financial gain from.

Abolition

The movement to make slavery and the slave trade illegal.

Deracination

Removal from one's native culture.

Sengbe Pieh

The leader of the revolt aboard the slave ship La Amistad

La Amistad

Name of the notable ship, that was overtaken by enslaved captives on its journey from Sierra Leone in 1839.

Mende Captives

Group of enslaved Africans who revolted aboard a slave ship in 1839.

Slave Auction

The place of arrival were enslaved Africans were made to perform and prove their health, so that they could be sold for a profit.

Cash Crop

A good grown specifically for a profit.

Cotton Gin

Invention that increased US production, profits and dependency on cotton as a cash crop.

Second Middle Passage

A second sort of journey that displaced over one million African Americans , as they were forcibly made to relocate as the domestic slave trade would grow and develop.

Gang System

Labor system that had enslaved laborers work in groups from sunup to sundown under the watch of an overseer as they cultivated crops.

Task System

Labor system where enslaved people worked individually until they met a daily quota, generally under less supervision.

Work Songs

Songs created, with syncopated rhythms, to keep the pace of work.

Gullah Creole

Language spoken by the Black population that lives in the lowcountry, coastal regions of the Carolinas and Georgia

Racial Nomenclature

The devising or choosing of names for things, specifically in regards to race.

Mulatto

An outdated term utilized to describe a person of mixed black and white ancestry.

Griffe

An outdated term utilized to describe a person of mixed, Black and White, race, specifically the offspring of a mulatto person of mixed Black and White ancestry, and a person of fully Black ancestry.

Slave Codes

Laws relating to chattel slavery in the US, that deliberately limited autonomy and freedoms of enslaved Black peoples.

Stono Rebellion

a 1739 uprising of slaves in South Carolina, leading to the tightening of already harsh slave laws

Code Noir

French decree passed by King Louis the XIV that defined the conditions of slavery in the French Colonial Empire.

South Carolina's 1740 Slave Code

Code that was updated in response to the Stono Rebellion that classified all Black and Indigenous communities as presumed enslaved peoples and prohibited gathering, drumming, running away, learning to read, or rebelling and condemned to death any enslaved person that attempted to defend themselves from attack by a White person.

Partus Sequitur Ventrem

17th century law that defined a child's legal status based on the status of its mother.

Race Concept

Social constructed concept, not based on clear distinctions, which often denoted different groups as subspecies or inferior groups.

Phenotype

Physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, etc., which would largely be used to contribute to perceptions of racial identity.

Hypodescent

Categorizing biracial individuals as belonging more to a minority racial category rather than majority ones.

One-drop rule

A practice that classified a person with any degree of African descent as part of a singular, inferior status.

Fort Mose

First sanctioned Free Black town created in Spanish Florida.

American Colonization Society

Organization that was founded by white leaders who were abolitionist but sought to address America's "race issue" by exiling the free Black population back to Africa.

Spirituals

The songs enslaved peoples sang to articulate their hardships and their hopes.

Dred Scott v. Sanford

Law suit in 1857 where a Black man challenged the legality of him and his family being enslaved because he was taken to free US territory and thusly should be a free citizen, the Supreme Court however ruled that African Americans, enslaved and free, could never become citizens of the US.

Ethnonyms

Preferred names for ethnic groups

Haitian Revolution

Toussaint l'Ouverture led this uprising, which in 1790 resulted in the successful overthrow of French colonial rule on this Caribbean island. This revolution set up the first black government in the Western Hemisphere and the world's second democratic republic (after the US). The US was reluctant to give full support to this republic led by former slaves.

Maroon Communities

African refugees who had escaped slavery in the Americas and developed their own communities in the US, Brazil and the Caribbean.

15th Amendment (1870)

Amendment that prohibited voting restrictions based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (slavery).

Benign institution

Misconception that slavery was a gentle system.

domestic slave trade

The trade of enslaved people within the United States.

Caboceer

An African, designated by an African leader, to supply European slave traders with slaves.