Shortly before the end of last school year, my district on California’s Central Coast made the decision to delay adopting a planned Advanced Placement African American Studies course. When a group of rising 12th grade students expressed their disappointment over that decision, I made them an offer: If they wanted access to some semblance of the curriculum of this course, then I would volunteer to serve as the faculty adviser to a new student-driven African American studies club.
Furthermore, I promised my students that I would attend an AP Summer Institute—the official course training offered by the College Board—to become equipped in the teaching methods and curriculum of the AP African American Studies course.
After the club was officially approved by our school this October, approximately 10 students and I committed ourselves to interdisciplinary study every Wednesday lunch period. We used the free, open-access framework of the College Board’s AP African American Studies curriculum as both an anchor and springboard for further exploration.
Because our weekly meetings cannot possibly cover the breadth, depth, and rigor of a yearlong, expansive curriculum, we agreed to focus on the participating students’ interests and intellectual curiosities, with students selecting the topics from each of the course outline’s four units.
My students appreciate that this club provides them an educational experience that does not currently exist within our school’s curriculum. As one sophomore club member noted, “We don’t get to learn this history anywhere else in our classes, which are more focused on European history. This history is just as important.”
As a white male teacher leading a predominantly white group of students in this club, I believe that studying African American history is one way to push back against the ethnocentrism that limits white students’ understanding of their own racial identities. I consider it important that all my students learn from the brilliant legacy of Black contributions to history, culture, art, and society.
I want my students to see that Blackness is complex and nuanced. It is important to recognize Blackness as expansive, rather than limited by white supremacist ideas that perpetuate damaging stereotypes about Black people.
I draw from educator and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s notion that there are “forty-two billion ways to be Black,” so that we begin our study with a shared recognition that Blackness is not a monolith. It is with this truth in mind that we acknowledge the varied climates, cultures, and histories of early African populations and kingdoms, further solidifying our recognition of the continent’s inherent diversity.
In the fall, through our exploration of such topics as Mansa Musa’s opulence and Queen Njinga’s leadership, my students began to conceive of Africa as a continent of vast cultural wealth and rich histories. In their recognition of Africa as the progenitor of African American history—my students start to see African American history as an intricately woven tapestry that stretches across the African diaspora, from antiquity to the present.
Next quarter, we will recognize the resistance of self-liberators and freedom-seekers and we will discuss African American photography as a means of framing one’s humanity. Later, we will learn from the political genius of African American club women who organized for suffrage and civil rights and we will marvel at the cultural production of the Harlem and Chicago renaissances. Finally, we will dive into Afrofuturism.
No one is earning college credit or being graded on their club participation, but my students still find it worthy of their time and commitment to broaden their worldviews.
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, it seems likely that K-12 Black history education in the United States is going to face even more challenges in the years ahead. Our engagement with a Black studies curriculum draws from a rich tradition of advocacy and activism spearheaded by Black students, scholars, teachers, and a multiethnic coalition of allies.
As we learn about the Black campus movement and student activism of 1965 to 1972, my students find a deeper context for their own desires to push for curricular change.
It is this tradition of advocacy from which my students and I draw our shared commitment to the study of African American history. For teachers in districts where the adoption of AP African American Studies has been denied or stalled, forming a club is one way to offer your students access to a curriculum rooted in Black studies.
Read more from educators on advancing Black history education.
