AP African American Studies — Practice Questions flashcards
6 of 60 questions free to study here · 4 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys
Multiple-choice practice questions, one best answer each, on early African states, the slave trade, slavery and resistance, abolition, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, migration and civil rights.
Practice deck · part of AP African American Studies · written against: College Board AP African American Studies Course and Exam Description (2024–25 course framework). Updated 2026-10-10.
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A historian reconstructing how Sundiata Keita founded the Mali Empire in the 1230s relies mainly on an epic that griots recited and passed down for centuries. What does this choice of source best illustrate?
A) West Africans had no written language before 1500
B) European travelers' accounts are the only reliable sources
C) Mali's rulers banned scholars from recording events
D) Oral tradition can serve as evidence for African historyD) Oral tradition can serve as evidence for African historyOrigins of the African Diaspora › Early Africa and the Sudanic Empires
The Epic of Sundiata, preserved by griots who acted as their societies' archives, is the main source for Mali's founding, a key example of oral tradition as historical evidence. West Africa did have writing: Timbuktu's scholars produced thousands of Arabic manuscripts. -
A world map made in Majorca in 1375 shows a West African king enthroned and holding a gold sphere. Which conclusion does this source best support?
A) Mali's wealth had made West Africa famous in Europe
B) European traders had reached Timbuktu by sea
C) Portuguese forts already controlled the West African coast
D) Songhai had already conquered the Mali EmpireA) Mali's wealth had made West Africa famous in EuropeOrigins of the African Diaspora › Early Africa and the Sudanic Empires
The Catalan Atlas pictures Mansa Musa of Mali, whose wealth and pilgrimage had spread his fame to Europe; the lure of African gold helps explain later Portuguese voyages south. Elmina, the first European fortress on the Gulf of Guinea, was not built until 1482. -
Juan Garrido, a free African-born man who had lived in Portugal and Spain, took part in Spanish conquests of Puerto Rico and Mexico and joined Ponce de León's 1513 voyage to Florida. His career best supports which claim?
A) Africans were present from the start of European colonization
B) Africans first reached North America through English colonies
C) Spain barred Africans from its expeditions until the 1600s
D) Most Africans in the early Americas came as free colonistsA) Africans were present from the start of European colonizationFreedom Enslavement and Resistance › The Transatlantic Slave Trade
Afro-Iberians such as Garrido crossed with the first Spanish expeditions as soldiers, sailors and servants. One free man's career does not show that most early arrivals were free; the great majority of Africans came enslaved. -
Estimates from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database show that over 40 percent of enslaved Africans who survived the crossing were landed in Brazil, while only about 4 percent were carried directly to mainland North America. Which conclusion do these figures best support?
A) Caribbean colonies relied less on enslaved labor than North America did
B) The voyage to North America was shorter and less deadly than others
C) Most of the diaspora in the Americas formed outside the present-day US
D) Most captives were taken from ports on the East African coastC) Most of the diaspora in the Americas formed outside the present-day USFreedom Enslavement and Resistance › The Transatlantic Slave Trade
Brazil and the Caribbean sugar colonies received the great majority of captives, so the diaspora's center of gravity lay south of the present-day US. The figures say nothing about regions of origin; the largest share came from West Central Africa. -
General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 (January 1865) set aside coastal land in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida for freed families in plots of up to forty acres. What happened to most of this land?
A) Congress confirmed freedpeople's titles to the land
B) Johnson's pardons returned it to former Confederate owners
C) Freed families bought it through the crop-lien system
D) The Freedmen's Bureau sold it to Northern investorsB) Johnson's pardons returned it to former Confederate ownersThe Practice of Freedom › Reconstruction and Its Overthrow
President Andrew Johnson pardoned former Confederates and restored most of the land to them from late 1865, with evictions continuing into 1866, undoing the promise remembered as 'forty acres and a mule'. Congress never confirmed freedpeople's titles. -
Before Brown v. Board of Education, NAACP lawyers Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall first challenged segregation in graduate and law schools, winning cases such as Sweatt v. Painter (1950). Why did they begin there?
A) Plessy v. Ferguson had applied only to elementary schools
B) States plainly could not offer equal separate professional schools
C) The federal government, not the states, ran most law schools
D) Southern states had already integrated their undergraduate collegesB) States plainly could not offer equal separate professional schoolsMovements and Debates › The Civil Rights Movement
Where a state had one law school, a separate Black school was obviously unequal, so these wins built precedents for a direct attack on segregated public schools. 'Separate but equal' applied broadly, which is why the lawyers had to prove inequality first.
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About these cards
Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Topic outline follows the College Board AP African American Studies course framework in the Course and Exam Description (effective Fall 2024), Units 1–4; used as an outline only, no text copied.
- Facts checked against the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (SlaveVoyages.org), the National Archives' Milestone Documents, Library of Congress primary-source collections and Oyez case summaries; reference only, no text copied.
- OpenStax U.S. History, consulted as a reference; no text copied.
- Direct quotations come only from public-domain texts (constitutional amendments, the Emancipation Proclamation and writings published before 1930); other sources are described or marked as paraphrased.
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