How We Fell: The Deliberate Erasure of African Civilization — Teacher Resources

How We Fell

The Deliberate Erasure of African Civilization — Teacher Resources

Before you were told you came from nothing — your ancestors were running the world.

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Quiz — How We Fell

PART A — MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. How many years before Hippocrates was Imhotep practicing medicine?

D) Over 2,200 years.

Students should be able to state the precise timeframe — over two thousand two hundred years — and understand its significance. Hippocrates is credited by Western medical tradition as the Father of Medicine, and the foundational ethical oath of the medical profession bears his name. Imhotep practiced medicine over two millennia before Hippocrates was born. [1]Nunn, John F. Ancient Egyptian Medicine. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.[2]Hurry, Jamieson B. Imhotep: The Vizier and Physician of King Zoser and Afterwards the Egyptian God of Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928. The Hippocratic oath is not named for the first physician in recorded history. It is named for a Greek physician who came over two thousand years after the first physician in recorded history. Students who answer A, B, or C are significantly understating the temporal precedence documented in the lesson.

2. Approximately how many students did the University of Sankore at Timbuktu house at its height?

C) 25,000.

Students should be able to state the specific figure — twenty-five thousand students — and understand what it means in context. At a time when European universities were still in their infancy, the University of Sankore was housing twenty-five thousand students and holding a library of seven hundred thousand manuscripts. [3]Hunwick, John O. Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Ta'rikh al-Sudan Down to 1613. Leiden: Brill, 1999.[4]Saad, Elias N. Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. The scale of the institution is not a footnote to African history — it is a headline that has been systematically excluded from mainstream world history education. Students who answer A, B, or D are significantly understating or overstating the documented enrollment.

3. According to the lesson, approximately how many African people were kidnapped between 1501 and 1867?

C) Nearly 13 million.

Students should be able to state the specific figure — nearly thirteen million — and understand the word choice: kidnapped, not transported or migrated. The lesson's use of kidnapped is deliberate and accurate. These were people removed from their homes and communities by force. The scale — nearly thirteen million over more than three and a half centuries — is documented in the Slave Voyages Database, one of the most comprehensive historical records of the transatlantic slave trade. [5]Slave Voyages Database. slavevoyages.org. Documentation of the transatlantic slave trade, including the estimated number of Africans transported between 1501 and 1867.[6]Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Students who answer A, B, or D are significantly understating the documented scale.

4. What punishments were imposed by American anti-literacy laws between 1740 and 1834?

B) Imprisonment or having a finger cut off.

Students should be able to state both punishments — imprisonment and finger amputation — and understand what they reveal. The specific punishment of finger amputation is particularly significant: it targeted the physical instrument of writing. [7]Cornelius, Janet Duitsman. 'When I Can Read My Title Clear': Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.[8]Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. This was not a symbolic prohibition. It was a targeted physical intervention designed to prevent the act of writing at the most literal level. Students should also understand the historical irony the lesson documents: these laws were directed at the descendants of the people who invented writing. Students who answer A, C, or D are misidentifying or significantly understating the punishments documented in the lesson.

5. What did Carter G. Woodson write in 1933 about the education of Black children?

B) That Black children were being taught to admire the Greek, the Latin, and the Teuton — and to despise the African.

Students should be able to quote or closely paraphrase Woodson's documented observation and understand its precision. [9]Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-Education of the Negro. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1933. Woodson did not write that Black children were being kept ignorant of African history. He wrote that they were being actively taught to despise the African. This is not the same as ignorance — it is indoctrination. The distinction matters because it describes not a passive gap in education but an active, deliberate replacement of African identity with European-centered contempt. Students who answer A, C, or D are misrepresenting or understating Woodson's documented observation.

6. What happened to Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921?

C) Thirty-five blocks were burned, up to three hundred people were killed, and ten thousand were left homeless by a white mob attack.

Students should be able to state all three documented figures — thirty-five blocks, up to three hundred killed, ten thousand homeless — and understand that the destruction was carried out by a white mob and covered up for decades. [10]Hirsch, James S. Riot and Remembrance: America's Worst Race Riot and Its Legacy. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.[11]Ellsworth, Scott. Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. The cover-up is as significant as the massacre itself: the deliberate suppression of this history from public record is itself an act of erasure consistent with the broader campaign the lesson documents. Students who answer A, B, or D are misidentifying or mischaracterizing the event entirely.

7. How does the lesson characterize the campaign against African history and identity?

C) As a deliberate, multi-century campaign to erase a people from their own history.

Students should be able to identify the lesson's precise characterization — deliberate, multi-century campaign — and understand what distinguishes this framing from alternatives. The lesson does not characterize these events as accidents, misunderstandings, or natural consequences of historical forces. It characterizes them as a deliberate campaign — intentional, sustained, and coordinated across different instruments including the slave trade, anti-literacy laws, educational indoctrination, and physical destruction of Black rebuilding. Students who answer A, B, or D are selecting framings that contradict the lesson's documented argument.

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PART B — SHORT ANSWER KEY POINTS

Question 8. The lesson documents that anti-literacy laws passed between 1740 and 1834 made it a crime to teach Black people to read — punishable by imprisonment or finger amputation — and describes this as targeting the descendants of the people who invented writing. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain what the combination of these two facts reveals about the specific nature and intent of anti-literacy laws as instruments of cultural erasure.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: anti-literacy laws between 1740 and 1834 made it a crime to teach a Black person to read, punishable by imprisonment or having a finger cut off; the people targeted by these laws were the descendants of the civilization that produced seven hundred thousand manuscripts at Sankore and invented hieroglyphics [7]Cornelius, Janet Duitsman. 'When I Can Read My Title Clear': Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.[8]Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
• What the combination reveals about intent: the specific punishment of finger amputation — targeting the physical instrument of writing — demonstrates that these laws were not merely prohibitive but actively destructive. They were designed to sever the physical capacity for literacy at its most literal level
• What the historical irony reveals about the nature of erasure: the targeting of writing literacy against the descendants of the people who invented writing is not coincidental. It suggests that the architects of anti-literacy laws understood — on some level — what they were trying to suppress. You do not cut off fingers to prevent people from doing something you believe they were never capable of
• Strong answers will connect: anti-literacy laws to the broader campaign documented in the lesson — the slave trade removed the knowledge holders, anti-literacy laws prevented the rebuilding of that knowledge, and educational indoctrination replaced it with contempt

Question 9. The lesson argues that the transatlantic slave trade was not only a physical catastrophe but a catastrophic disruption of African historical knowledge — because the elders, scribes, healers, and builders who held oral history were among those kidnapped. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain what the removal of these specific categories of people reveals about the relationship between human memory and historical knowledge.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: nearly thirteen million African people were kidnapped between 1501 and 1867; the lesson specifically names elders, scribes, healers, and builders as among those removed — the people who held oral history, documented knowledge, practical expertise, and the physical skills of civilization-building [5]Slave Voyages Database. slavevoyages.org. Documentation of the transatlantic slave trade, including the estimated number of Africans transported between 1501 and 1867.[6]Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
• What the removal of these categories reveals: oral history does not exist on paper or in libraries — it exists in people. When the people who hold it are removed, the knowledge they carry does not transfer automatically to those left behind or to the next generation. The removal of elders was the equivalent of burning a library that had no written copies
• The relationship between human memory and historical knowledge: the lesson implies that knowledge is not merely stored in objects — manuscripts, monuments, artifacts — but in people and their relationships. A civilization can survive the burning of its library if the scholars who memorized its contents survive. It cannot survive the removal of those scholars
• Strong answers will connect: the removal of knowledge holders through the slave trade to the subsequent anti-literacy laws — together they represent a two-stage erasure: first remove the people who hold the knowledge, then prevent their descendants from rebuilding it

Question 10. The lesson characterizes the destruction of Black Wall Street, anti-literacy laws, the transatlantic slave trade, and the replacement of African identity with European indoctrination as parts of the same deliberate, multi-century campaign. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain what evidence supports characterizing these as a coordinated campaign rather than unrelated events — and what the difference between accident and campaign means for how we assign historical responsibility.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: anti-literacy laws were passed state by state between 1740 and 1834 — a coordinated legislative pattern across multiple jurisdictions; Carter G. Woodson documented in 1933 that Black children were being actively taught to despise the African — not merely kept ignorant but indoctrinated; Black Wall Street was destroyed and then covered up for decades — suggesting that the suppression of evidence of Black achievement was itself part of the pattern [9]Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-Education of the Negro. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1933.[10]Hirsch, James S. Riot and Remembrance: America's Worst Race Riot and Its Legacy. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.[11]Ellsworth, Scott. Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
• What supports the campaign characterization: the events documented in the lesson are consistent with each other across time and geography. They share a common target — African historical knowledge and Black economic and cultural rebuilding — and they escalate in response to Black achievement. This consistency across different instruments, different states, different centuries, and different perpetrators is what distinguishes a campaign from a coincidence
• What the difference between accident and campaign means for responsibility: if these events were accidents, they have no perpetrators — only circumstances. If they were a campaign, they have architects, executors, and beneficiaries — and those beneficiaries include institutions and systems that still exist today. The difference is not merely historical. It is legal, moral, and political
• Strong answers will connect: the lesson's conclusion — the truth didn't die, it was buried — to the campaign characterization. Burial requires intent. Things do not bury themselves. The survival of African historical knowledge despite the campaign is a testament to the people who preserved it — and the ongoing project of digging it back up

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Sources & Footnotes

1. [1] Nunn, John F. Ancient Egyptian Medicine. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Documentation of Imhotep as the first named physician in recorded history.
2. [2] Hurry, Jamieson B. Imhotep: The Vizier and Physician of King Zoser and Afterwards the Egyptian God of Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928. Primary academic study of Imhotep's life and medical contributions.
3. [3] Hunwick, John O. Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Ta'rikh al-Sudan Down to 1613. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Documentation of Timbuktu's scholarly institutions.
4. [4] Saad, Elias N. Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Documentation of the University of Sankore's enrollment and manuscript holdings.
5. [5] Slave Voyages Database. slavevoyages.org. Documentation of the transatlantic slave trade, including the estimated number of Africans transported between 1501 and 1867.
6. [6] Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Documentation of the human consequences of the transatlantic slave trade.
7. [7] Cornelius, Janet Duitsman. 'When I Can Read My Title Clear': Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. Documentation of anti-literacy laws in the American South.
8. [8] Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Documentation of anti-literacy laws and their enforcement.
9. [9] Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-Education of the Negro. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1933. Primary source documentation of the role of American education in the cultural erasure of African identity.
10. [10] Hirsch, James S. Riot and Remembrance: America's Worst Race Riot and Its Legacy. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Documentation of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
11. [11] Ellsworth, Scott. Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. Primary academic study of the destruction of Black Wall Street.

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