African-American History Finally Gets Its Own AP Class—And Historians Say It's More Important Than Ever (msn.com)

Photo: From left to right: Poet and social activist Langston Hughes, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and novelist Toni Morrison. All three are among the Black luminaries taught as part of a new AP African American Studies course that is being piloted in high schools across the U.S. in 2022.© Getty Images (3)

Author: Olivia B. Waxman's article, please click here.

Only one of the high-schoolers in the majority-Black Tallahassee, Fla., class, which kicked off this month, recognized Thurgood Marshall, the first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice. And he got no reaction to Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. Everyone recognized Maya Angelou, but most hadn’t heard of Langston Hughes or Zora Neale Hurston.

Williams-Clark is teaching at one of 60 schools nationwide piloting AP African American Studies this year. The course will be the College Board’s 40th Advanced Placement course, and the first new AP course since 2014. Next year, students will officially be able to take the class to earn college credit at about 35 colleges, from Virginia Tech to Tuskegee University.