C3_FRAMEWORK_SOCIAL_STUDIESAPhigh school
AP African American Studies
Explore the full arc of the African American experience -- from the civilizations of West Africa through the Middle Passage, from slavery and resistance through the civil rights movement, and from Black Power to the debates shaping racial justice today. This interdisciplinary course blends history, literature, art, politics, and sociology. You will build the analytical, interpretive, and source-evaluation skills the AP exam tests while engaging with one of the most important stories in American life.
4units
12topics
180questions
~5hours
Course Units
Learning objectives
- Analyze the political, economic, and cultural achievements of West African civilizations before European contact, including Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and the Kongo Kingdom
- Explain the causes, mechanics, and scale of the transatlantic slave trade including the roles of European demand, African intermediaries, and global economics
- Evaluate how enslaved Africans retained and adapted cultural practices -- language, music, religion, kinship systems -- in the Americas despite forced displacement
- Assess the physical, psychological, and cultural impact of the Middle Passage on African diasporic identity and memory
- Interpret primary sources from African and European perspectives to analyze the slave trade with nuance and specificity
Topics in this unit
Learning objectives
- Analyze the economic, legal, and social structures that sustained chattel slavery including slave codes, the cotton economy, and pro-slavery ideology
- Evaluate the diverse forms of resistance employed by enslaved people -- from armed rebellion (Nat Turner, Stono) to everyday acts of defiance and cultural preservation
- Explain the goals, strategies, and internal debates of the abolitionist movement including Black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth
- Assess the achievements and failures of Reconstruction for Black Americans, including the 13th-15th Amendments and the rise of white supremacist violence
- Analyze primary sources -- slave narratives, legal documents, abolitionist speeches -- to construct evidence-based historical arguments
Topics in this unit
Learning objectives
- Analyze the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement across the entire United States, not just the South
- Evaluate the cultural and political significance of the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance for African American identity and artistic expression
- Explain the diverse strategies, leadership structures, and grassroots organizing of the civil rights movement beyond its most famous figures
- Assess how landmark legislation -- the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965) -- transformed legal protections and what remained unresolved
- Interpret artistic, literary, and musical sources from the Harlem Renaissance and civil rights era as both cultural expression and political action
Topics in this unit
Learning objectives
- Analyze the goals, strategies, internal debates, and lasting impact of the Black Power movement and its relationship to the broader civil rights struggle
- Evaluate the contributions of Black feminism -- Audre Lorde, bell hooks, the Combahee River Collective -- to broader frameworks of social justice and intersectionality
- Explain the causes, policies, and disproportionate consequences of mass incarceration for Black communities since the 1970s
- Assess contemporary debates about reparations, intersectionality, systemic racism, and the ongoing movement for racial justice
- Develop and defend your own evidence-based position on a contemporary debate related to African American studies
Topics in this unit