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Marcio Jose Sanchez

The latest version of a groundbreaking African American studies course for the nation’s high schools says students should learn about professional football quarterback <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/01/colin-kaepernick-kneeling-history/" target="_blank">Colin Kaepernick</a> and his decision in 2016 to kneel during the national anthem as a protest against racial oppression and police brutality.

The Advanced Placement <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/cfab8638-3479-493f-a272-03f3329d128f.pdf" target=_blank>course plan released Wednesday</a> makes that addition, alongside many others, and restores some terms and concepts — including the adjective “systemic” — that previously had been expunged or minimized in part because they were deemed too controversial. These developments spotlight anew the high stakes and deep political overtones of a course that is now in a trial phase and scheduled for nationwide launch next fall.

“This is the course I wish I had in high school,” Brandi Waters, the lead author of the plan for the College Board, said in a statement. “I hope every interested student has the opportunity to take it.”

Did politics scrub 'systemic' from the AP African American Studies plan?

The evolving plan for AP African American studies has drawn intense scrutiny over the past year as Florida Gov. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/ron-desantis-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Ron DeSantis</a>, who is a Republican <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/presidential-candidates-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">presidential candidate</a>, and others <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/19/florida-desantis-ap-african-american-history/" target=_blank>assailed elements of its presentation</a> of history, culture and race. Civil rights advocates complained that the College Board, which oversees AP and the SAT admissions exam, had watered down the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/01/ap-african-american-studies-curriculum-desantis/" target=_blank>course in February</a> in response to conservative pressure.

The College Board <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/04/24/ap-african-american-studies-course-changes/" target=_blank>conceded missteps</a> in April and pledged to revise the course plan. Changes will take effect next fall.

Now, the plan again includes a prominent reference to the scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw and her pioneering work on “intersectionality,” a term that helps explain overlapping experiences of discrimination affecting Black women and others. Crenshaw is also known as an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/an-architect-of-critical-race-theory-we-cannot-allow-all-of-the-lessons-from-the-civil-rights-movement-forward-to-be-packed-up-and-put-away-for-storage/2022/01/14/24bb31de-627e-11ec-a7e8-3a8455b71fad_story.html" target=_blank>architect</a> of critical race theory. That academic concept — not mentioned in the revised course plan — in recent years has become a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/29/critical-race-theory-bans-schools/" target=_blank>target of conservative outrage</a>. Previously, Crenshaw’s name had been omitted from the course plan and “intersectionality” relegated to a single mention.

Back, too, is “systemic.” Civil rights advocates and scholars frequently use the word to describe racism and other forms of discrimination embedded in society for generations. Some conservative politicians and commentators contend the term is overused or misused.

Read the new AP African American studies course framework

“Systemic” appeared nine times in an April 2022 draft of the AP course plan and remained in working documents as recently as a year ago. It vanished entirely in the February plan.

It appears at least twice in the latest one. Once, the document says students should learn about African American efforts to combat effects of “systemic marginalization locally and abroad.” Then, it highlights “systemic oppression, harassment” and other troubles that Black people with disabilities have endured.

“We are relying on the terms that are most common in current scholarship in the field,” Waters said in an interview.

The course is the latest to join the AP program, which spans subjects from art history to physics and offers tests that enable students to qualify for college credit. The course <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/12/02/ap-african-american-studies-black-history/" target=_blank>was piloted</a> in about 60 schools during the last school year. Now nearly 700 schools are trying it out in 40 states. Next spring thousands of students in those schools will be able to take an AP test in African American studies. In 2024-25, the course and test are scheduled to be more widely available.

How many schools will offer the course is unknown. In January, Florida <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/19/florida-desantis-ap-african-american-history/" target=_blank>rejected an earlier draft</a> of the course plan on the argument that it “lacks educational value.” DeSantis accused the course architects of promoting “a political agenda.” His tussle with the College Board prompted an uproar in Florida and beyond.

On Wednesday, the Florida governor’s office referred questions about the updated course plan to the state Department of Education. Representatives for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Joshua Lott

The revised course plan, a 294-page document, was developed by college faculty, high school teachers and other experts. Overall, it resembles what was previously released: a sequence of lessons that start with the origins of the African diaspora and move through enslavement, resistance, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement and beyond.

“It is a course made possible by hundreds of African American studies scholars, and it takes seriously the longstanding Black intellectual tradition and, importantly, the diversity of thinking within that tradition,” Jarvis R. Givens, a professor of education and African and African American studies at Harvard University, said in a statement.

Colin Powell, the first Black secretary of state, continues to be named in the course plan. So does former president Barack Obama, the first African American to hold the nation’s top office.

The course carves out three weeks at the end of the school year for students to research a topic of their choosing, a writing project that counts for 10 percent of the AP exam score.

The new course plan also adds a week of lessons for “further explorations” on a topic the teacher can choose. Among suggestions listed are the reparations debate; incarceration and abolition; and “Black foodways and culinary traditions.”

The revisions do not explicitly require study of contemporary topics such as the reparations debate and the Black Lives Matter movement. That may disappoint activists and scholars who believe those are essential subjects for an introductory course.

But several additions were made to required topics. A lesson on White supremacist violence in the early 20th century was given two days, instead of one, with expanded attention on the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. A day was added for the study of Black life in theater, television and film, and another was added on African Americans in sports.

Waters said the sports lesson responded in part to interest from students who have taken the pilot course. “They wanted to hear a lot of dimensions about sports,” she said in an interview.

The lesson covers racial segregation in sports as well as the 1947 breakthrough of Jackie Robinson as the first Black player in Major League Baseball and the iconic 1968 photo showing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/10/16/a-cry-freedom-black-power-salute-that-rocked-world-years-ago/" target=_blank>Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos</a> with gloved fists raised in a Black Power salute.

Then the lesson zeroes in on Kaepernick. His peaceful protest, the course plan says, “inspired athletes in other sports to do the same, bringing the problem of police brutality into the national spotlight.” The lesson includes a photo of the quarterback kneeling during the anthem before the San Francisco 49ers played the Seattle Seahawks in January 2017. Deeply controversial in some quarters, the protest came at a cost. That was Kaepernick’s last game in the National Football League.

Education Writers Association 2016 national award for beat reporting, large newsrooms

Stanford University, bachelor's degree in English

Nick Anderson covers higher education and other education topics for The Washington Post. He has been a writer and editor at The Post since 2005.