UNIT 2 – Enslavement & Emancipation

The story of Black life, labor, culture, and resistance before 1865, told with depth, joy, and power.

Unit 2: Enslavement and Emancipation is not the whole story of Black history, but it is a story every student deserves to learn with care, accuracy, and honesty. Unit 2 of AP Black Studies follows African Americans from the first Africans in the Americas through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the institution of American slavery, and the long fight for freedom. It ends with the Civil War, emancipation, and the first Juneteenth.

In this unit, students meet people, not just events. From the beginning, students will study Juan Garrido, a black conquistador, along with Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatley, who wrote their own narratives of surviving enslavemnnt. They meet the enslaved potter David Drake, who inscribed poetry into clay pots, and female orator Maria W. Stewart, who spoke out before almost anyone else dared. Along with historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, Unit 2 exalts and elevates the stories of legendary Black leaders that fought vigrorously for the liberation of enslaved Black people. Scholars also learn about the many forms of resistance: ship revolts and rebellions, maroon communities, the Underground Railroad, and the daily acts of culture, faith, and family that kept people whole. Along the way, students see how the law, the economy, and the invention of "race" built the system their ancestors resisted.

This unit never reduces its subject to suffering alone. Students study the music, quilts, pottery, and spirituals enslaved people created, along with the free Black communities, women activists, and thinkers who debated the best path to freedom: Radical Resistance, Emigration, or Anti-Emigration. Students also meet maroon societies, the Black Seminoles, and freedom-seekers across the diaspora, including in Brazil. They come away with an accurate, human, and powerful understanding of how African American ancestors endured, resisted, and reshaped a nation. Sensitive lessons are handled with care and honesty, with content warnings built in where they are needed.

A.P. Black Studies Moves from ENSLAVEMENT to EMANCIPATION – Discover the Lessons That Bring It to Life