WS/FCS to expand AP African American studies course next year following pilot

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools piloted a new Advanced Placement African American studies course this past school year. 

Alexis Callender was one of the first teachers to offer the new class in the district. She's been teaching African American studies at East Forsyth High School in Winston-Salem for the past 11 years. It started out as a half credit elective taught for just 45 days, but Callender worked with the school district and the county to develop a curriculum for a class that would count as a full social studies credit. 

“The course went overnight from just having maybe two African American studies elective courses being taught at the school to the point where that was all I was teaching, because we had so many students taking those courses,” she said. 

So when the district had the chance to pilot College Board’s newly created AP African American studies course last year, Callender jumped at the opportunity. 

“Sign us up. We're a go, let's do the pilot. Because, you know, that's the next level," Callender said. "We've had honors, we’ve had standard, and then now to be able to offer that next level of African American Studies, because a lot of students want to be able to go deeper, to be able to explore this stuff in a little bit more detail.”

The AP course is structured chronologically, starting out in Africa. Students explore ancient empires and linguistics, before learning about slavery around the world. Then they move into the United States, studying the reconstruction era and the civil rights movement. The end of the course is focused on contemporary African American life and culture, and topics ranging from Black feminism to Afrofuturism. 

In all of her African American studies classes — standard, honors and now AP — Callender says her students always tell her the same thing. 

“They learned things in that class that they didn't learn anywhere else," Callender said. "That to me, is the big takeaway, right?” 

College Board announced the development of the AP African American studies course in 2021. It was piloted in 60 classrooms across the country the following year. 

That number jumped to 700 last year, with three schools in Winston-Salem taking part — East Forsyth High School, North Forsyth High School and the Career Center.

WS/FCS Director of Social Studies Courtney Tuck was glad to see students and teachers interested in taking part in the pilot. She says it’s important for students to be exposed to multicultural perspectives. 

“There's not a test question or a quantitative measure that can capture how important it is for all of our students of all backgrounds, to really widen their perspective and deepen their knowledge about African American history, as well as our other multicultural courses," Tuck said. 

At the end of the course, students were asked to present final projects on a topic of their choosing. One student explored the impact of the different activism styles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X. Another looked at African Americans in country music. They researched historic Black towns, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the impact of Hip-Hop on the Black community and more. 

Sophia Swift, a rising senior, did her project on Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, a court case related to desegregating schools. She says she’s a big history buff,  but in this course, almost everything was new to her.

“Except for people like the obvious like Sojourner Truth, Phyllis Wheatley, Harriet Tubman, like I had no clue about any of this," Swift said. "Like, to no extent whatsoever.”

She loved learning about women who were leaders throughout history, from medieval African queens to modern-day activists. The most eye-opening topic she said was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where American doctors let Black men die for the sake of an experiment. All of this, she said, gave her context that’s helped her understand the world today. 

“I think this class is important for Black students, but just as important for students that aren’t Black, so they can get more of an insight into the Black experience in America," Swift said. 

But Swift says taking this class did make her think about what her Black peers specifically, are missing. 

“How would you feel if this much of your history had just been like, pushed to the side," she said. "And not honored as much as other groups of people's history in the U.S.?”

That’s something Swift’s teacher, Akwete McAlister, experienced back when she was a student. 

“I would be like the African American student in the AP course in my hometown in South Carolina," McAlister said. "And I often felt unseen or like the things that were important in my community weren't talked about.”

In the other AP classes she teaches, McAlister says the student population is primarily white. One aim of this course is to bring more Black students into advanced placement classes, where they’re underrepresented nationally — and it worked. 

“This is the first class that I could say that really, to me, looked like our district. That looked like Winston-Salem at the AP level," she said.

McAlister says students of all backgrounds benefit from learning African American history, because it is American history. She says the journey of Black people in this country have inspired other marginalized groups and shaped democracy as we know it. 

But the course has faced pushback in some states where conservative politicians are looking to limit teaching about race in schools. Florida’s Department of Education rejected the class last year. Arkansas did the same, and just this month, South Carolina followed suit. 

McAlister hopes that doesn’t happen in North Carolina. 

“I think that our conversations and our understanding of the dynamics of how the history of the country has shaped the country doesn't mean that you have to stay there, but if it is ignored, if it's not talked about, leads us nowhere," she said. 

The course is set to expand to more schools and more classrooms in Winston-Salem next year.

Amy Diaz covers education for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.