Briana Alvarado
Notable civil rights attorney Ben Crump sets out to file a lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis after the state rebuffs the proposal of the Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies course pilot program. Crump is expected to publicly announce the lawsuit at a conference at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee Wednesday afternoon.
Polarization surrounding Black studies heightens as DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” Act strikes down the course which he says promotes a political agenda emphasizing that “we want education, not indoctrination.”
Florida Senator Manny Diaz Jr. echoing the sentiments of Governor DeSantis says it was “filled with Critical Race Theory and other obvious violations of Florida law.”
“We proudly require the teaching of African American history,” Senator Diaz Jr. said in a tweet on Friday. “We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education.”
The Associated Press spoke with other authors called out in the chart including Roderick Ferguson, Robin D.G. Kelly, and Leslie Kay Jones.
“These are real histories. The arguments about them are based on scholarly investigation and research — as are the arguments from the other scholars on this list,” Ferguson told the AP on Friday. “Unfortunately, we are in a moment in which right-wing forces are mobilizing to suppress the free discussion of those realities. If we need an example of that mobilization, we could probably just turn to the forces that came together to reject this course.”
101 Magazine reached out for comment and in response, the College Board sent a statement announcing the release of the official AP African American Studies course for Wednesday, Feb. 1. There is no confirmation whether changes will be made according to the Florida Department of Education’s pushback.
“Before a new AP course is made broadly available, it is piloted in a small number of high schools to gather feedback from high schools and colleges,” the statement continues. “The official course framework incorporates this feedback and defines what students will encounter on the AP Exam for college credit and placement.”
HBCU contributors to the College Board’s pilot AP African American Studies course, however, say it’s only half-baked and not representative of collegiate-level Black studies.
“They are denying students a deep dive into the Africana experience because of their objections to 7 topics that cover issues in the present,” Myers told 101 Magazine. “And the idea that they already cover African American History? NO. Not like this.”
Associate professor of Africana studies at Howard University and author of A Black Study Dr. Joshua Myers was one of three HBCU faculty members selected to write or develop the curriculum of the anticipated Black studies breakthrough course.
“Part of my concern is you won’t get what is in effect in your placement of the African American studies experience on the AP level,” Myers said. “The course needs to be better.”
Development began in 2021 with committee members for writing and advisory teams receiving invitations to participate in the designing of the introductory course. The new framework, according to the College Board, has been under development since March 2022 and will replace the pilot course.
In April of last year, hundreds of African American studies scholars attended a conference hosted by the College Board to evaluate the course material during the development stages.
“We told them in that moment, it’s not doing enough,” Myers said.
Howard University professors Myers, Dr. Gregory Carr, and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University professor Darius Young specialized in Black studies for decades, publishing work and teaching the subject at the collegiate level.
“I strongly believe that teachers need to go through extensive training in the summer to be able to teach this course,” Myers said.
However, teachers selected for the pilot testing had no background in Black studies aside from a 3-day training provided by the College Board at Howard University last summer according to Myers.
“We have to keep pushing the needle to make this course representative of what Black studies really is and AP, you don’t get to define that,” Myers said.
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