In its third year at Jackson-Reed, AP African American Studies (APAAS) is going strong. The newest AP class to be created, APAAS was first administered at Jackson-Reed during the 2022-23 school year. JR was part of a select group of schools to pilot the course and give feedback to College Board, the organization that administers AP exams and curriculums, before the course was fully released. Three years in, it has become one of the staple AP electives at Jackson-Reed, and a core part of our modern course list. 

According to College Board, this AP is an “interdisciplinary course,” meaning it analyzes information from a wide array of topics. Classes range from African American cultural history, like Duke Ellington of the Harlem Renaissance, to  historically relevant African societies such as  the Mali and Nok. This course also covers difficult history that sparks discussions among students, including slavery and the Jim Crow era. “This is a new challenge for students to approach history from a black studies perspective,” said African American Studies teacher Ariel Alford. By giving students the opportunity to engage with new thoughtsthey never have before, African American Studies provides a truly unique experience.

As an AP course, APAAS is not without its rigor. In a typical class, students read long and dense sources that range from the Dred Scott Decision to speeches by Malcolm X. The AP exam requires knowledge of the significance and chronological order of historic events, the ability to analyze sources efficiently, and argumentation skills for a Document-Based Question (DBQ), which was added to the exam this year. Students must also create and present a course project at the end of the year that factors into their AP score. Though not easy, the wide range of skills that the course builds is extremely valuable to any student.

Although successful at Jackson-Reed, not everyone has taken kindly to the class. During the course’s first pilot year in early 2023, Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his administration banned the course from being taught in Florida public schools, citing curriculum topics such as black queer studies and intersectionality that supposedly interfered with Florida state law as reasons for the ban. This received widespread attention from the national media and ultimately resulted in some topics, including critical race theory and Black Lives Matter, being removed from the curriculum. The course remains banned in Florida to this day.

At Jackson-Reed, many students are aware of the curriculum changes, and some have feelings on the implications of it. “For those topics to be removed would be like taking down what America was built off of,” said a tenth grader currently taking the course. As a course that tackles difficult subjects that may subvert our understanding of history and who we are as a society, AP African American Studies will inevitably have critics, but our school strives to persevere. “This course can set a spark for people to study black history,” said Alford. “It’s a point of departure, a place to start.”