Coach Tony Green’s Pilot AP African American Studies Course
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African Americans 101 His class starts not with enslaved Africans brought to the United States in the 1600s and 1700s but with much older African cultures and societies. To understand the people who were brought over as slaves, we need to understand the cultures they came from in Africa and credit them for how their knowledge helped build the United States. As Tony Green’s wife, Marguerite—who also works at Bishop O’Dowd as the Assistant Director of Student Activities—points out, “We need to understand that slaves were chosen from particular parts of Africa because of the skills they had, such as growing rice and indigo and managing agriculture in areas that flood.” Also, Tony says that 30 percent of slaves in the United States were Muslim, and these people were often literate at a time when not every White person in the American South was able to read and write. He shares that the name of California comes from Queen Califia, a fictional Black Moorish queen inhabiting an island of Black people. “This highlights just how integral Black communities are to our state, as well as to the whole country.” Later, the class covers aspects of Black life in the United States, including slavery and its aftermath, the Great Migration of Black people north and west out of the segregated South in search of freedom from discrimination and better opportunities, the Black Panther Party, and the civil rights movement. The course follows Black American history up to the recent Black Lives Matter protests. Sign Up Already have an account? Sign In
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