Unit 2 Vocabulary: Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance
Early Exploration, Creole Generations, and Foundations of Bondage
Ladinos: Free or enslaved Africans who explored early America alongside Europeans and were frequently part of a generation known as Atlantic creoles.
Atlantic Creoles: Africans who served as vital links between Europeans and Native populations.
Chattel Slavery: A form of slavery in which a person is legally deemed personal property, a status that passes down from generation to generation.
Conquistadors: African explorers who assisted Europeans in conquering America in hopes of gaining their freedom.
Juan Garrido: A free man who became the first known African to arrive in North America, landing in present-day Florida.
Estevanico: An enslaved African healer who was forced to work as a translator and explorer in Texas.
Departure Zones: Regions located all along the western coast of Africa from which slave ships departed.
Slave Coast: The section of the West African coast extending from the Volta River to the Lagos Channel.
Transatlantic Slave Trade and Human Commodification
The Middle Passage: The second leg of the journey in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade: The triangular trade system connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas, which forcibly brought over enslaved people from Africa to the Americas.
Slave Narratives: The documented experiences of enslaved people communicated through poetry and other forms of art.
Slave Ship Diagram: Charts and visual diagrams that depict the close arrangement of enslaved people packed inside ships.
Abolitionists: Individuals and groups who called for the immediate or systematic end of slavery.
Commodification: The reduction of human value to less than human, viewing and treating people as tools or commodities rather than human beings.
Deracination: The forced removal or separation of someone from their culture and heritage.
Sengbe Pieh: A captive who successfully led a major revolt aboard one of the slave ships transporting captives.
La Amistad: The vessel taken over by Sengbe Pieh and his fellow revolting captives.
Mende Captives: Enslaved people who were captured from Sierra Leone.
Slave Auction: A commercial marketplace where enslaved people were sold off to the highest bidder.
Labor Systems, Crop Production, and Cultural Preservation
Cash Crop: Crops grown solely for the purpose of generating economic profit.
Cotton Gin: A machine that significantly increased processing speed, thereby escalating the demand for forced slave labor on cotton farms.
Second Middle Passage: The massive domestic forced migration of enslaved people from the Upper South to the Lower South.
Gang System: A labor system where enslaved people were forced to work in organized groups from sunrise to sunset under the constant surveillance of an overseer.
Work Songs: Rhythmic songs sung by enslaved people while working to maintain a consistent pace and avoid physical punishment.
Task System: A labor system in which enslaved individuals worked independently until assigned daily tasks were completed, allowing for a degree of personal freedom.
Gullah Creole: A distinct language created by enslaved people operating under the task system as a means to preserve their native linguistic practices.
Racial Nomenclature: A systemic legal and social classification system designed to mark and organize people based on their racial profile.
Mulatto: A historical racial designation for an individual with one Black parent and one White parent.
Griffe: A historical racial designation for an individual who was Black and Indigenous.
Rice Fanner Basket: A specialized basket demonstrating how West African agricultural practices and craftsmanship successfully crossed the Atlantic to the Americas through the knowledge of enslaved people.
Legal Frameworks, Supreme Court Decisions, and Racial Taxonomy
Slave Codes: Comprehensive laws designed to establish slavery based on race, ensure its inheritable nature, and make it a lifelong condition.
Code Noir: A French colonial legal framework that limited and restricted the freedoms, rights, and physical movements of enslaved people.
Stono Rebellion: The largest armed uprising of enslaved people in the British colonies, which directly triggered an intense update and tightening of South Carolina's slave codes.
South Carolina's 1740 Slave Code: A series of repressive legal codes passed following the Stono Rebellion that prohibited enslaved people from learning to read, playing drums, gathering, rebelling, or moving from one town or plantation to another without explicit written permission from their owner.
Dred Scott v. Sanford: A landmark Supreme Court ruling which declared that Black people were not citizens of the United States and could never become citizens.
Partus Sequitur Ventrem: A legal doctrine stipulating that a child's legal status as free or enslaved was determined exclusively by the condition of the mother.
Racial Taxonomy: A formal classification system that categorizes human beings based on physical traits and ancestral background.
Phenotype: The observable physical traits of an individual, such as skin color and hair texture.
Hypodescent: The practice of automatically categorizing biracial or multiracial individuals into the subordinate or minority racial group.
One-Drop Rule: A social and legal standard dictating that anyone with any percentage of African ancestry was to be considered Black and treated as legally and socially inferior.
Rebellions, Religious Expression, and Early Anti-Slavery Action
Spirituals: Religious folk songs created by enslaved African Americans that expressed spiritual devotion, coded communication, and hopes for freedom.
Nat Turner's Rebellion: A major armed revolt of enslaved people in Virginia led by Nat Turner that resulted in widespread panic and stricter security measures across the South.
Denmark Vesey: A free Black carpenter who organized a major slave rebellion plan in Charleston, South Carolina, prior to its discovery and suppression.
Frederick Douglass: An escaped former enslaved man who became a prominent abolitionist, orator, writer, and defender of human rights.
Henry Highland Garnet: An African American abolitionist minister who advocated for direct physical resistance and rebellion by enslaved people against their enslavers.
The American Colonization Society: An organization established to support the voluntary migration and resettlement of free Black individuals from North America to Africa.
Asylum in Spanish Florida: A sanctuary policy implemented by Spanish authorities offering freedom and land to enslaved people escaping British territories if they converted to Catholicism and pledged loyalty to Spain.
Fort Mose: The first legally sanctioned free Black settlement established in North America, located near St. Augustine, Florida.
Haitian Revolution: A successful anti-slavery uprising led by enslaved Africans in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, leading to the creation of the independent nation of Haiti.
Maroon Communities: Autonomous, hidden settlements formed by self-liberated individuals who escaped slavery into wilderness areas such as swamps, mountains, and forests.
Charles Deslonges: A key leader who helped organize and lead the 1811 slave revolt along Louisiana's coast.
German Coast Uprising (Louisiana Slave Revolt): A major 1811 uprising of enslaved people near New Orleans, recognized as one of the largest slave revolts in United States history.
Madison Washington: An enslaved man who organized and led a successful revolt aboard the slave ship Creole, directing the vessel to the British Bahamas where freedom was secured.
Community Institutions, Sanctuaries, and Afro-Diasporic Traditions
Mutual-Aid Societies: Community-led organizations established by free Black individuals to provide financial support, burial services, and social relief to member families.
Maria Stewart: An pioneering African American female speaker, writer, and abolitionist who publicly lectured on anti-slavery and women's rights.
Ida B. Wells: An investigative journalist, educator, and civil rights advocate who documented the widespread atrocity of lynching across the United States.
Great Dismal Swamp: A dense wetland area in Virginia and North Carolina that sheltered long-standing maroon communities of self-liberated Black people.
Quilombo dos Palmares: A massive, self-governing maroon community in colonial Brazil that resisted Portuguese military efforts for nearly a century.
Bayano: An enslaved African leader who launched and headed a major maroon uprising against Spanish rule in Panama.
Queen Nanny of the Maroons: A chieftain and military strategist of the Jamaican Maroons who led guerrilla warfare tactics against British military forces.
Capoeira: A martial art combining physical defense, dance, and music created by enslaved Africans in Brazil to disguise self-defense techniques.
Congada: An Afro-Brazilian cultural and religious tradition celebrating the coronation of African monarchs through pageantry and song.
Manumission: The formal legal release or emancipation of an enslaved person by their owner.
Seminoles: A Native American nation in Florida that provided sanctuary to, allied with, and integrated escaping enslaved African Americans.
Indigenous Enslavers: Native American individuals and tribes that adopted European-style agricultural chattel slavery and held Black people in bondage.
Political Ideologies, Emigration, and Resistance Frameworks
Emigration: The voluntary departure of free Black individuals from the United States to settle and build self-governing colonies in places like West Africa, Canada, or the Caribbean.
Paul Cuffee: A wealthy African-Native American sea captain and businessman who personally financed and led early emigration voyages of free Black people to Sierra Leone.
Martin R. Delany: An abolitionist, physician, and advocate widely acknowledged as a pioneer of Black nationalism who advocated for Black emigration and sovereignty.
Black Nationalism: An ideological movement promoting Black self-determination, cultural preservation, economic independence, and the establishment of separate Black institutions or nations.
Anti-Emigrationism: A political stance held by Black leaders who opposed emigration, maintaining that Black Americans were entitled to full civil rights and citizenship in the land built by their labor.
Fugitive Slave Acts: Federal statutes requiring that escaped enslaved individuals be captured and returned to their enslavers, even if found in free states.
Moral Suasion: An abolitionist approach aimed at convincing enslavers and the public to end slavery by appealing to Christian morality and human conscience.
Integrationists: Civil rights leaders and activists who advocated for the equal integration and full social, political, and legal rights of Black Americans within existing society.
Radical Resistance: Direct, uncompromising opposition to slavery that approved the use of physical force, sabotage, and rebellion to overthrow the institution.
Direct Action: Immediate physical tactics—such as escapes, strikes, boycotts, and revolts—used to confront and dismantle systems of oppression.
Anti-Slavery Pamphlet: Published literature produced by abolitionists to expose the cruelties of slavery and mobilize public opinion against bondage.
Liberation Networks and Autobiographical Accounts
The Underground Railroad: A covert network of secret routes, safe houses, conductors, and allies that assisted escaping enslaved individuals in reaching free states and Canada.
Abolitionist Movement: A broad social and political campaign dedicated to achieving the immediate, total, and uncompensated eradication of slavery.
Harriet Tubman: An escaped former enslaved woman who served as a famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading dozens of people to freedom without losing a passenger.
Combahee River Raid: A armed military raid planned and guided by Harriet Tubman alongside Union troops, which successfully liberated over enslaved people in South Carolina.
Sojourner Truth: A former enslaved woman who became a famous abolitionist orator and women's rights campaigner.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: An autobiographical slave narrative written by Harriet Jacobs detailing the distinct horrors, abuses, and self-liberation efforts of enslaved women.
The Civil War, Executive Orders, and Final Emancipation
Civil War: The armed conflict fought between the Northern states (Union) and Southern seceding states (Confederacy) driven primarily by the issue of slavery.
Emancipation Proclamation: An executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln that took effect on January 1, 1863, declaring free all enslaved people living in Confederate states in rebellion.
13th Amendment: The constitutional amendment that officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, except as punishment for a crime.
Juneteenth: The annual commemoration of June 19, 1865, marking the arrival of Union troops in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the freedom of enslaved people.
General Order No. 3: The official military directive read by Union General Gordon Granger in Galveston, Texas, informing the public that all enslaved people were free.
Freedom Days: Local and national celebrations organized by African American communities to honor emancipation, legal freedom, and self-liberation.