African American Heritage & Ethnography African Nation Founders: Historic Contexts—Self Assessment 1

Learning from the Past: Assess Your Knowledge

This review will help determine your knowledge of the information contained in this section. Answer the questions below to the best of your ability. After you have completed all of the questions please click the Check the Quiz button at the bottom of the page. You can hit the Reset button at the bottom of the page to retake the quiz.

  1. Understanding the life and culture of colonial Africans can be helpful to park service personnel for understanding why certain places, landscapes, objects, sites and structures have ethnographic significance for many contemporary African Americans.

    1. True

      Correct. Understanding past cultures as well as contemporary traditionally associated groups helps to better understand the connection with history and present day significance given to ethnographic resources.

    2. False

      Incorrect.

  2. Which of the following is NOT a “Myth of the Negro Past?”

    1. The cultures of Africa were so “savage” and “low” on the scale of civilization that when given the opportunity Africans gave up their traditions for European traditions.

      Incorrect.

    2. There was no common denominator to draw enslaved Africans together in the New World.

      Incorrect.

    3. Only the “poorer” stock of Africans was enslaved.

      Incorrect.

    4. Only war captives were exchanged and enslaved, a common African enslavement practice.

      Correct. Those who were enslaved came from all walks of life and backgrounds. The enslaved were war captives, but also traders going from one trade route to another, women and children captured during raids, and nobility traded as a result of internal conflict between kingdoms.

  3. Select the Best answer to complete the sentence:

    Knowledge about life in medieval African states is:

    1. limited because Africans passed on knowledge through oral traditions that have been lost.

      Incorrect.

    2. not limited because Islamic scholars recorded it.

      Incorrect.

    3. documented by African oral traditions, accounts by Islamic scholars and archeological excavations.

      Correct. Medieval African states have been identified by way of Islamic scholars and text, archeological excavations like Dar-Tchitt of ancient Ghana, and through the practice of oral tradition passed down through the generations. Each of these examples attests to states having centralized governments, local trade routes and educational systems.

    4. scarce since it depends upon archeological excavation of ancients sites.

      Incorrect.

  4. Which of the statements below is FALSE:

    1. In the 18th century, people of the Mande culture were highly represented among those enslaved in the French Louisiana colony in North America.

      Incorrect.

    2. Relatively few Yoruba and Fon people, the two principal ethnic groups in the Oyo kingdoms, were enslaved in colonial North America.

      Incorrect.

    3. Teachers and students of Sankore University in Timbuktu were from West Africa.

      Correct. Teachers and students of Sankore University of Timbuktu were from all over sub-Saharan Africa and from Arabic nations in the east. They were not limited to only those in the Western part of the continent.

    4. The 16th and 17th century “Kongos” and “Angolas” shared a lingua franca that allowed them to communicate, similar social organization and religious beliefs.

      Incorrect.