5 INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

1. Shaka
a Zulu chief in Southern Africa who used soldiers and good
military organization to create a large centralized state.
2. Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu
He was a west African scholar, writer, and political
provocateur in the area then known as West Sudan.
3. Nzinga Mvemba
King of Kongo south of Zaire River from 1507 to 1543;
converted to Christianity and took the title Alfonso I; under
Portuguese influence attempted to Christianize all of the
kingdom.

William Wilberforce

4. Osei Tutu
member of Oyoko clan of Akan peoples in Gold Coast region of Africa; responsible for creating unified
Asante Empire; utilized Western firearms
5. William Wilberforce
British statesman and reformer; leader of abolitionist movement in English parliament that led to end of
English slave trade in trade in 1807.
RELIGOUS CHANGES

Portuguese missionaries achieved major success in Kongo where Nzinga

Mvemba Christianize the kingdom; however, ironically they were still enslaved.

In Sudanic states, they believed that Muslim's slavery was illegal; how ever nonbeliever's captives was permitted. Despite the complaint, many Muslims were still enslaved.

In 1840's, the effects of Islamization and the Fulani expansion created new
political units; where they tried to eliminate pagan practice. Literacy became more widely
dispersed and new center of trades were made

On the Middle Passage many kept their original faith.

In America, slaves were converted to Catholicism by Portuguese and Spaniard;

however, original African ideals and practices still lived. Mixed variation such as obeah in
English islands candomble in Brazil, and vondun in Haiti. These religion fully developed and
flourished.

Resistance and rebellion led to the preservation of the African culture and roots.
Such as the Surname Maroons, who fended of the Dutch. They fused Native American, Africa,
and European beliefs into one religion making this fusion called Afro- American culture