AP African American Studies

What the course covers

4 units, with exam weights

1. Unit 1

   Origins of the African Diaspora

   20-25% of examFree
   What the discipline is, then Africa before the transatlantic slave trade (roughly 900 BCE to the sixteenth century): geography and the Bantu migrations, Nok, Kush, and Aksum, the gold-rich Sudanic empires, Timbuktu and the griots, religious syncretism, Great Zimbabwe and the Swahili Coast, the Kingdom of Kongo, queens Idia and Njinga, and Africans in early modern Europe.
   11 topics

   1. 1.1What Is African American Studies?
   2. 1.2The African Continent: A Varied Landscape
   3. 1.3Population Growth and Ethnolinguistic Diversity
   4. 1.4Africa's Ancient Societies
   5. 1.5The Sudanic Empires: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai
   6. 1.6Learning Traditions
   7. 1.7Indigenous Cosmologies and Religious Syncretism
   8. 1.8Culture and Trade in Southern and East Africa
   9. 1.9West Central Africa: The Kingdom of Kongo
   10. 1.10Kinship and Political Leadership
   11. 1.11Global Africans

2. Unit 2

   Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance

   30-35% of exam
   The sixteenth century to 1865, the heaviest unit on the exam. Africans in early Spanish colonization, the scale and routes of the transatlantic and domestic slave trades, the law and the social construction of race, the making of African American culture, resistance from shipboard revolts to Stono, Haiti, maroon wars, and radical abolitionism, debates over emigration and belonging, gender in slave narratives, the Civil War, and Juneteenth.
   24 topics

   1. 2.1African Explorers in the Americas
   2. 2.2Departure Zones in Africa and the Slave Trade to the United States
   3. 2.3Capture and the Impact of the Slave Trade on West African Societies
   4. 2.4African Resistance on Slave Ships and the Antislavery Movement
   5. 2.5Slave Auctions and the Domestic Slave Trade
   6. 2.6Labor, Culture, and Economy
   7. 2.7Slavery and American Law: Slave Codes and Landmark Cases
   8. 2.8The Social Construction of Race and the Reproduction of Status
   9. 2.9Creating African American Culture
   10. 2.10Black Pride, Identity, and the Question of Naming
   11. 2.11The Stono Rebellion and Fort Mose
   12. 2.12Legacies of the Haitian Revolution
   13. 2.13Resistance and Revolts in the United States
   14. 2.14Black Organizing in the North: Freedom, Women's Rights, and Education
   15. 2.15Maroon Societies and Autonomous Black Communities
   16. 2.16Diasporic Connections: Slavery and Freedom in Brazil
   17. 2.17African Americans in Indigenous Territory
   18. 2.18Debates About Emigration, Colonization, and Belonging in America
   19. 2.19Black Political Thought: Radical Resistance
   20. 2.20Race to the Promised Land: Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad
   21. 2.21Legacies of Resistance in African American Art and Photography
   22. 2.22Gender and Resistance in Slave Narratives
   23. 2.23The Civil War and Black Communities
   24. 2.24Freedom Days: Commemorating the Ongoing Struggle for Freedom

3. Unit 3

   The Practice of Freedom

   20-25% of exam
   From 1865 to the 1940s. The Reconstruction Amendments and the Freedmen's Bureau, Black Codes, sharecropping, and convict leasing, the collapse of Reconstruction and Plessy, Jim Crow and the nadir, the Red Summer and Tulsa, Du Bois and double consciousness, uplift strategies and Black women's leadership, Black institutions and HBCUs, the New Negro movement and Harlem Renaissance, the Great Migration, Afro-Caribbean migration, and Garvey's UNIA.
   18 topics

   1. 3.1The Reconstruction Amendments
   2. 3.2Social Life: Reuniting Black Families and the Freedmen's Bureau
   3. 3.3Black Codes, Land, and Labor
   4. 3.4The Defeat of Reconstruction
   5. 3.5Disenfranchisement and Jim Crow Laws
   6. 3.6White Supremacist Violence and the Red Summer
   7. 3.7The Color Line and Double Consciousness in American Society
   8. 3.8Lifting as We Climb: Uplift Ideologies and Black Women's Rights and Leadership
   9. 3.9Black Organizations and Institutions
   10. 3.10HBCUs, Black Greek Letter Organizations, and Black Education
   11. 3.11The New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance
   12. 3.12Photography and Social Change
   13. 3.13Envisioning Africa in Harlem Renaissance Poetry
   14. 3.14Symphony in Black: Black Performance in Music, Theater, and Film
   15. 3.15Black History Education and African American Studies
   16. 3.16The Great Migration
   17. 3.17Afro-Caribbean Migration
   18. 3.18The Universal Negro Improvement Association

4. Unit 4

   Movements and Debates

   20-25% of exam
   The 1940s to the present. Négritude, Negrismo, and anticolonial solidarity, the Second World War and the Double V campaign, Brown v. Board and redlining, the civil rights organizations and Black women's grassroots leadership, the arts and faith of the freedom struggle, the Nation of Islam and Black Power, the Black Arts movement, the Black Panther Party, Black is Beautiful, Black feminism and intersectionality, political representation, contemporary diversity, music from spirituals to hip-hop, film, sports, science, and Afrofuturism.
   21 topics

   1. 4.1The Négritude and Negrismo Movements
   2. 4.2Anticolonialism and Black Political Thought
   3. 4.3African Americans and the Second World War: The Double V Campaign and the G.I. Bill
   4. 4.4Discrimination, Segregation, and the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
   5. 4.5Redlining and Housing Discrimination
   6. 4.6Major Civil Rights Organizations
   7. 4.7Black Women's Leadership and Grassroots Organizing in the Civil Rights Movement
   8. 4.8The Arts, Music, and Politics of Freedom
   9. 4.9Black Religious Nationalism and the Black Power Movement
   10. 4.10The Black Arts Movement
   11. 4.11The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
   12. 4.12Black Is Beautiful and Afrocentricity
   13. 4.13The Black Feminist Movement, Womanism, and Intersectionality
   14. 4.14Interlocking Systems of Oppression
   15. 4.15Economic Growth and Black Political Representation
   16. 4.16Demographic and Religious Diversity in Contemporary Black Communities
   17. 4.17The Evolution of African American Music: From Spirituals to Hip-Hop
   18. 4.18Black Life in Theater, TV, and Film
   19. 4.19African Americans and Sports
   20. 4.20Science, Medicine, and Technology in Black Communities
   21. 4.21Black Studies, Black Futures, and Afrofuturism

The exam, part by part

5 parts, 2 h 45 min in all.

• Section I: Multiple Choice

  Questions

  60

  Time

  1 h 10 min

  Weight

  60%

  Format details

  Set-based: every question belongs to a set of 3 or 4 questions that share one source or a pair of sources. About 13-14 single-source sets and 4-5 paired-source sets. Up to half of the stimulus material comes from the required sources named in the course framework; the rest are related sources students have not studied. Four answer choices (A-D). Unit weights: Unit 1 20-25%, Unit 2 30-35%, Unit 3 20-25%, Unit 4 20-25%. No calculator.

• Section I, Part B: Individual Student Project Exam Day Validation

  Questions

  1

  Time

  10 min

  Weight

  1.5%

  Format details

  Task types: Project Validation

  One written question about the student's own course project and the sources used in it (for example, how two sources offer different perspectives, or which source was most useful and why). Complete sentences required; scored 0-2 by AP Readers.

• Section II, Part A: Short-Answer Questions

  Questions

  3

  Time

  40 min

  Weight

  18%

  Format details

  Task types: SAQ (Text Source), SAQ (Visual Source), SAQ (No Source)

  Exactly one of each type: one question on a written source, one on a visual source (image, artwork, photograph, or map), and one with no source built on a theme that runs across units. The 2025 and 2026 exams presented them in that order (text, visual, no source). 40 minutes is the suggested pace; Section II is 85 minutes total and students may move between questions.

• Section II, Part B: Document-Based Question

  Questions

  1

  Time

  45 min

  Weight

  12%

  Format details

  Task types: DBQ

  Five sources (Source 1 to Source 5) offering varied perspectives on one development, typically mixing written texts with at least one image and one data source. Suggested 45 minutes, including reading time. Scored on a 7-point rubric.

• Individual Student Project (through-course, teacher-scored)

  Questions

  1

  Time

  8 min

  Weight

  8.5%

  Format details

  Task types: Individual Student Project

  Not part of exam day. A three-week independent research project: a Selected Sources Template for four sources, a 5-minute presentation, and a 3-minute oral defense, scored by the teacher on the 12-point AP rubric and submitted by May 31. Mock exams on this platform should report the exam-day sections (91.5% of the score) and treat this component separately.

Skills the exam scores

• 1AIdentify and explain concepts

  Identify and explain course concepts, developments, and processes (Skill Category 1: Applying Disciplinary Knowledge).

• 1BExplain context

  Identify and explain the context of a specific event, development, or process.

• 1CExplain patterns and connections

  Identify and explain patterns, connections, or other relationships: causation, change, continuity, and comparison.

• 1DConnect to the discipline

  Explain how course concepts, developments, and processes relate to the discipline of African American Studies.

• 2AClaim, evidence, and reasoning

  Identify and explain a source's claims, evidence, and reasoning (Skill Category 2: Source Analysis).

• 2BDescribe perspective, purpose, context, and audience

  Describe a source's perspective, purpose, context, and audience.

• 2CExplain significance of sourcing

  Explain the significance of a source's perspective, purpose, context, and audience.

• 2DAnalyze data

  Describe and draw conclusions from patterns, trends, and limitations in data, and connect them to relevant course content.

• 3AFormulate a claim

  Formulate a defensible claim (Skill Category 3: Argumentation).

• 3BSupport with evidence

  Support a claim or argument using specific and relevant evidence.

• 3CSelect credible sources

  Strategically select sources, weighing the credibility of the evidence they present, to support a claim effectively.

• 3DCite consistently

  Select and consistently apply an appropriate citation style.

• 3ELine of reasoning

  Use a line of reasoning to develop a well-supported argument.