African American history 
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
2/3/2023
Conversation: Why is AP Taking Activism Out of African American Studies?
Historians Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Robin D.G. Kelley discuss the roots of African American Studies in civil rights activism, which makes the decision to de-emphasize contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter inexplicable and diminishes the power of the course to help students make sense of the society.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/3/2023
Will Midwest Governors Challenge Florida's Conservative Education Agenda?
Governors J.B. Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer are hardly beacons of "wokeness" – but they may be key advocates of a political message to parents and teachers that their party will protect the freedom to learn.
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2/6/2023
The Heroes of Ripley, Ohio
by David Goodrich
David Goodrich bicycled 3,000 miles along the routes of the Underground Railroad, encountering the places of history from a new perspective. This excerpt follows him through the Ohio-Kentucky borderland and across the river that marked free territory.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/25/2023
Florida's AP Fight Latest Battle in a Very Old Education War
by Bethany Bell
The state's rejection of the proposed curriculum as "indoctrination" stands on the foundation laid by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to establish the Lost Cause myth as the center of history education in the South for generations.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
1/30/2023
On Florida's Erasure of Black History
by Lynn Pasquerella and Mary Dana Hinton
The Florida AP decision raises a host of troubling questions about what the state hopes to accomplish, with ominous implications for political enfranchisement, democratic deliberation, and civic connection.
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SOURCE: Truthout
1/30/2023
Refuse a Return to "Normalcy" after Police Killings
by Austin McCoy
Refusing to accept avoidable death as part of American life—from COVID or police violence—is the foundation of change. Americans need to organize a national day of mourning in the form of a work stoppage.
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SOURCE: TIME
2/1/2023
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham on the AP Af-Am Studies Controversy
by Olivia B. Waxman
The Harvard historian, one of the principal evaluators of the AP curriculum, says that the most prominent public statements about the pilot course reflect misunderstanding or deception about what its contents really are.
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SOURCE: African American Studies Faculty in Higher Ed
1/31/2023
600 African American Studies Faculty Sign Open Letter in Defense of AP African American Studies
"We categorically reject DeSantis’s autocratic claim to knowing what college-level material should be available in an AP African American Studies course. There is no precedent, of which we are aware, for him or the Florida Department of Education to claim expertise on any other subject matter for AP course adoption."
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SOURCE: Organization of American Historians
2/1/2023
Organization of American Historians Statement on AP African American Studies
"The OAH further rejects the characterization of these scholars and their scholarship as examples of “woke indoctrination,” and instead recognize them as central to the interdisciplinary research and teaching of African American history and culture, as well as American history more broadly."
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SOURCE: Boston Review
2/1/2023
A Reading List of Authors Removed from the AP African American Studies Course
The College Board has made revisions to its pilot African American Studies course that appear to follow the criticisms made by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Here's a collection of essays by many of the scholars representing diverse Black intellectual traditions whose ideas will not be part of the course going forward.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
1/29/2023
Ron DeSantis Battles the College Board—and History
by Jelani Cobb
"It’s scarcely surprising that a discipline built on an interest in exploring Black humanity would find itself in the crosshairs. That such a thing would happen in Florida is even less so."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/29/2023
100 Years After Rosewood, Just One House Remains
The home of John Wright, a white merchant who helped shelter Black residents from mob violence, is all that remains of the former town of Rosewood.
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SOURCE: WTTW
1/27/2023
Prof. Hasan Kwame Jeffries on Consulting for Hip Hop at 50 Documentary
The Ohio State professor served as a consultant for the four hour documentary produced by Public Enemy's Chuck D, which begins January 31.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
1/28/2023
Glenda Gilmore's Bio Shows Artist Romare Bearden Reckoning with the South
"Gilmore sets a timeline, critiques some striking artworks, and leaves the reader wondering why hardly anyone writes about art this succinctly."
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SOURCE: The Conversation
1/24/2023
Some Escaped Slavery Without Escaping the South
by Viola Franziska Müller
The majority of people escaping slavery before Emancipation never crossed the Mason-Dixon line, finding a measure of freedom in southern cities.
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SOURCE: Inquest
1/24/2023
Family Histories where Black Power Met Police Power
by Dan Berger
Fighting back against mass incarceration today means learning from the stories of Black Power activists who fought against the expansion of police power and surveillance since the 1960s.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
1/17/2023
Kidada Williams on The Reconstruction that Wasn't
In the new "I Saw Death Coming," Williams describes a "shadow Confederacy" that refused to cede freedom or dignity to African Americans who often lived far from the reach of a federal government that was unreliably committed to their protection.
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SOURCE: Daily Beast
1/19/2023
Florida's Ban on AP African American Studies Class is Authoritarian
by Jeremy C. Young
The decision is "bad for free speech and for educational practice, and it's especially worrisome for Florida high school students. When politicians go to war with teachers, students always lose."
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/13/2023
Three Novels Rooted in Forgotten Black Histories
Novels by Kai Thomas, Jamila Minnicks, and Nyani Nkrumah tell stories of Black life at the Canadian end of the Underground Railroad, an all-Black town in 1950s Alabama, and in post-Civil Rights Mississippi.
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SOURCE: 19th News
1/12/2023
Anastasia Curwood on New Shirley Chisholm Bio
By framing Chisholm as a person with a life history, Curwood elevates knowledge of the New York congresswoman from a "first major party candidate" to a political theorist and visionary.
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