The Story of Nzinga: A Black Hero and the Power of Inclusivity in South Carolina, when Malcolm X and W.E.B. Du Bois met

When I was a student in Columbia, South Carolina, I was enamored with the legacies of certain historical figures: W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X.

Over the past few decades, we as a society have done a better job of teaching about Black history and African American studies. He said that a lot of teachers still fall short. “What I mean is that our kids hear the same stories every year. That is not to suggest that the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks are diminished. If our students are only learning about a few people in school, they are missing out on a lot.

In South Carolina, it is no small feat to test out the course, which did not remove the battle flag from statehouse grounds until after the White supremacist massacre.

Crucially, Soderstrom noted that AP African American Studies isn’t a standard-issue history course, though it proceeds in a relatively chronological fashion and will eventually make its way to the US.

She told CNN that she took the class because she didn’t know much about Black history. The course should be part of the curriculum. Why wouldn’t we want to ignore this history?

“She was a very strong woman – a heroine – and fought on the front lines with her soldiers,” Soderstrom said of Nzinga, celebrated for pushing back against Portuguese colonization and the trade of enslaved people in Central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. “But we tend to skip the stories of people from Africa.”

We get to learn all these things as a society. She said that they don’t get to hear about what the figures went through. “My black classmates deserve to hear this history.” It’s awesome that Ridge View is a majority-Black school and gets to help create this course.”

Nicole Walker is the director of the school’s Scholars Academy Magnet for Business and Law and she also was my 9th grade English teacher.

She told CNN that what is best for children is to see themselves reflected in the curriculum and to celebrate their cultures. A child who is safe and valued is going to do better in school.

Senior Jacynth Tucker is familiar with the power of inclusivity. She said that at a previous school, she and other Black students felt invisible.

“I can’t even remember a time when we really explored Africa – talked about the history and the culture,” she told CNN. Being in a class that is more focused is very special to me.

“One activity I really liked was when our teacher showed us a collage and asked, ‘What do all these people have in common?’” she told CNN. “Their commonality was that they’re all Black. The point of that discussion was that there is a lot of diversity within the Black community and it is important to talk about it.

The debut of the AP African American Studies pilot course was overshadowed by Republican-led racial panic in many schools.

In the first eight months of this year, there were 137 laws in 36 states that limited discussions about race, US history and gender in higher education. This figure is a 250% increase over 2021.

The number of attempts to censor books this year will surpass the record set in 2021, according to the American Library Association. The ALA had 712 attempts between January 1 and August 31.

These attacks seek to determine what content is and isn’t legitimate in an academic context; they’re part of a much broader counter-mobilization against efforts to topple racial and social hierarchies.

“We’re not seeing different political conflicts. We’re seeing one big political conflict – one big reactionary political project,” as Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents, told CNN in July.

“Henry Louis Gates Jr. is one of the senior minds when we’re talking about American studies and African American history. He was quoted recently explaining that the course isn’t political,” Soderstrom said. We teach factual information, and everything is true.

The Florida College Board of Arts and Sciences: Status, Status and Prospects for a New Course on Black History and Political Science in High Schools

The organization said the course is being offered in 60 high schools as a pilot and will grow to hundreds of more schools in the upcoming school year. The course is expected to be available to all schools in the 2024-25 school year, according to the College Board website.

I had the same fundamental curiosity when I was in high school, she said, and is excited to see what comes next.

In Jacksonville, the Governor said at a news conference that it was a political agenda. “That’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them when you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”

In recent months, the course has been praised by academics and historians, but is now a target for lawmakers trying to restrict how topics like racism and history are taught in public schools.

Gov. DeSantis told reporters last week the decision was made because it included the study of “queer theory” and political movements that advocated for “abolishing prisons.”

The course covers subjects such as early African kingdoms, Jim Crow laws, the accomplishments of Black Americans in art, science and literature, and much more.

The units include other topics, such as the responses of African American writers and activists to racism and anti-Black violence, the founding of historically Black colleges and universities, Black Caribbean migration to the United States, segregation in the 20th century, redlining and the civil rights movement.

More than 300 professors of African American studies, including faculty from dozens of HBCUs, were consulted during the development of the course framework, which was completed in December, the organization said.

The College Board stated that the official framework only requires the analysis of core historical, literary, and artistic works and doesn’t have a required list of secondary sources.

In a letter to the College Board in January, the Florida Department of Education stated that the course would not be admitted into Florida high schools as it was not in line with state law.

The education department told CNN that it had concerns about some topics of study in the 81-page document. Bryan Mandeville shared the document with CNN last month.

The official course framework released on Wednesday did not include the case for Black Lives Matter or the Movement of Black Lives. The required readings for the final framework do not include any of the authors who were listed as concerns by Florida education officials.

The reparations debate, “gay life and expression in Black communities,” and Black Lives Matter are only included in a list of examples of the topics that students can pick for research projects.

“These topics are not a required part of the course framework that is formally adopted by states and that defines the exam. The College Board said in the framework that this list was partial and can be refined by states and districts.