The College Board officially launched the Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies course nationwide in the 2023-24 school year. However, the course’s roots at the high school go much deeper, tracing back to the late 1960s, amidst the introduction of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) program and the American Civil Rights movement.
African American Studies originally arrived at the high school in 1968 as Black History. It came with a district-wide push following the establishment of the METCO, a program that allows students from the Boston area to attend public schools in Brookline and other participating districts. Decades later, with a few bumps along the way, the class still stands as African American Studies, a mixed-level honors and AP senior social studies course that explores the vital contributions and experiences of African Americans.
METCO Director and former teacher of the class, J. Malcolm Cawthorne, said the course originally came with student and district-wide advocacy.
“It is the oldest senior elective that we still offer. METCO students started in Brookline in the fall of 1966. So it [the course] was to meet the needs of some of those students and also to follow the death of Dr. King,” Cawthorne said.
The first-ever national African American history course was introduced by San Francisco State University after a months-long push by their Black Student Union (BSU), along with select staff and faculty members, in 1967. Brandeis, Howard and Boston University later adopted similar programs following their lead. According to BHS Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator and current teacher of the class, Jen Martin, at the time, it was uncommon for a high school to teach such a cutting-edge course.
“African American Studies is a discipline that colleges started around that time in the mid-sixties. So the fact that a high school was teaching it is kind of awesome,” Martin said.
Cawthorne said he believes that offering the course at Brookline gave people a unique opportunity to view history through an alternate lens.
“For white people in America, it is really easy not to hear other people’s stories,” Cawthorne said. “And I don’t mean that in any sort of facetious way. If you do everything that you’re taught to do from a cultural standpoint, that means you’re probably not with a lot of diversity.”
The 2023-24 school year was the first time since the course’s debut that there weren’t enough students to run it, according to Martin. However, Martin was not ready for the program to end there.
“Simultaneously, the College Board was launching one of their first new classes, which was incidentally AP African-American Studies, so after looking at the curriculum, I decided and presented to the school committee, and said, ‘We want to offer AP African American Studies,’” Martin said.
Cawthorne said that as history has evolved since the 60s, a lot has changed, and he believes the switch to AP was a positive move for the course.
“The course should have changed,” Cawthorne said. “And I don’t mean that it was bad to start. As we got more scholarship and more people researching and more people in general, we had a greater wealth of knowledge to choose from, as well as being able to challenge some of the prior notions of why things happened and adding to the story of what did happen.”
According to Martin, the course was extremely controversial upon its release by the College Board.
“The state of Florida does not allow students in Florida to take this class,” Martin said, “I start the class on the very first day, I’m like, ‘Google the class and see what people think.’ And it’s kind of interesting. People were shocked.”
According to senior Maliah Thompson, who is currently a student in the class, the current AP studies course is interdisciplinary, drawing upon music, art, journals and narratives as well as traditional historical pieces and documents. She said the wider focus on culture has allowed her to view her own history from a different perspective and connect with it on a deeper level.
“I think I was really interested in it, because I’m African American, learning about my people in a sense that wasn’t looking at it through slavery or the Jim Crow era,” Thompson said. “I was also really interested in, as a senior, having a course that would also finish off my time of learning history.”
Cawthorne said he believes there is a movement to sanitize history, which is why he feels it is so important that classes like this continue to be offered at the high school and across the country.
“[Through AP African American Studies], you have this chance to really stretch [your mind] in a way that I think is really hard in our society,” Cawthorne said. “Having these classes offers those opportunities. And I hope we keep thinking about it that way.”
