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  3. Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course
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Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course, 3rd Edition by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.
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Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course

Third Edition| ©2025 Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Freedom on My Mind for the AP Course, Updated 3e is the groundbreaking, first textbook written for the AP® African American Studies course. New authors Alysha Butler and Rachel Williams-Giordano bring their extensive classroom and AP® leader experience to empower students to ex...
Freedom on My Mind for the AP Course, Updated 3e is the groundbreaking, first textbook written for the AP® African American Studies course. New authors Alysha Butler and Rachel Williams-Giordano bring their extensive classroom and AP® leader experience to empower students to explore the rich tapestry of African American experiences through AP® course-aligned units. Students are invited to connect historical and cultural developments, and to develop source analysis and argumentation skills with AP® Working with Sources document collections, AP® Skill Workshops, and integrated AP® Exam practice. This edition builds learners’ confidence and competence, offering ample opportunities to master AP® skills crucial for success in the course, on the exam, and in the course project. With Freedom on My Mind, students are not only prepared for exams, but also encouraged and equipped to understand and appreciate the diverse narratives that shape our world.
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Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course, 3rd Edition by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Let Freedom Empower You to Succeed

Freedom on My Mind for the AP Course, Updated 3e is the groundbreaking, first textbook written for the AP® African American Studies course. New authors Alysha Butler and Rachel Williams-Giordano bring their extensive classroom and AP® leader experience to empower students to explore the rich tapestry of African American experiences through AP® course-aligned units. Students are invited to connect historical and cultural developments, and to develop source analysis and argumentation skills with AP® Working with Sources document collections, AP® Skill Workshops, and integrated AP® Exam practice. This edition builds learners’ confidence and competence, offering ample opportunities to master AP® skills crucial for success in the course, on the exam, and in the course project. With Freedom on My Mind, students are not only prepared for exams, but also encouraged and equipped to understand and appreciate the diverse narratives that shape our world.

Features

NEW! Unit openers aligned to the AP® course highlight and contextualize important content.

  • Illustrated unit introductions offer an overview of each unit's content. These brief sections highlight key developments and processes covered in the chapters. You'll also find extra material from the AP® course and Exam Description that isn't included in other textbooks for this course.
  • Thematic Unit Timelines tie history to the AP® course Themes. A thematic unit timeline follows unit introductions contextualizing the chronology of key concepts, developments, and processes from the AP® African American Studies CED in relation to the four AP® course themes: Migration and the African Diaspora; Intersections of Identity; Creativity, Expression, and the Arts; and Resistance and Resilience.
  • Unit Warmups offer fun, engaging source analysis practice. Unit Warmups provide visual analysis practice. These images can be found throughout the chapters and are accompanied with helpful Key Context notes to help students tackle Prediction Questions, which tie directly to AP® Skills.

REVISED FOR AP®! Chapter-opening features contextualize important AP® course content.

  • Chapter Timelines give students a sense of chronology, reinforcing and expanding on the AP® Unit Thematic Timelines.
  • Contextualizing African American Stories vignettes share a real-life example of how the chapter’s content affected someone—or vice versa.

NEW! AP® skills support and content in the margins of the student edition.

  • Chapter headings include questions aligned to the AP® course Learning Objectives, helping students actively read and engage with AP® course objectives.
  • AP® Exam Tips in the margins highlight important concepts to focus on for the AP® Exam. These offer a boost where it matters most, providing memorable and active on-the-spot advice for making connections between ideas and the AP® sources.
  • AP® Skills: Applying Disciplinary Knowledge notes help students apply the skills to content. These questions identify places to apply key disciplinary practices, reasoning processes, and skills students will need to perform well on the AP® Exam.
  • A running glossary keeps track of important concepts and events. Even more terms are defined in a full Glossary/Glosario at the back of the book.

REVISED FOR AP®! The art program is designed to develop AP® skills and support work with AP® course sources.

  • Critical thinking questions promote visual source analysis. From stimulus-based multiple-choice questions to Short-Answer and Document-Based Questions, visual sources are an important and challenging part of the AP® Exam. That’s why the AP® edition of Freedom on My Mind provides a robust caption and critical analysis question for every image in the book, asking students to analyze multiple perspectives and develop well-supported responses.
  • AP® course sources are visible at a glance. Throughout the book, you’ll see where the art program aligns to the AP® course framework thanks to a helpful AP® Source icon. These reference points also emphasize that some visual sources are especially important to know.
  • Revisit Your Prediction Activities help students connect ideas and practice source analysis. These activities are paired with the images in the Unit Warmups and are designed to support the Making Connections AP® Skill. Students use evidence from the chapter to back their arguments as they revisit and revise their predictions.

REVISED FOR AP®! End-of-chapter features make reviewing course content and applying new skills a breeze.

  • Key terms and AP® course sources are gathered in a list of AP® Essential Vocabulary and Sources that serves as an easy-to-find reference point.
  • Applying Disciplinary Knowledge: Essential Questions serve as checkpoints that allow students to demonstrate their understanding of key concepts, developments, and processes.
  • Suggested References lists arranged by topic are designed to support students’ own research as they embark on their Individual Student Projects.

REVISED FOR AP®! AP® Working with Sources collections hone source analysis and argumentation skills.

Every chapter in Freedom on My Mind includes an AP® Working with Sources collection — a rich, themed set of textual and visual primary sources. Each collection focuses on a particular chapter topic, from first-hand accounts of the slave trade to perspectives on the Black Lives Matter movement. With built-in supports to build and practice AP® source analysis and argumentation skills, these document collections feature primary textual and visual sources, including personal letters, memoirs, poetry, public petitions, newspaper accounts, photographs, visual arts, cartoons, propaganda, and more. By placing the texts of these historical actors in conversation with one another, we enable students to witness the myriad variations of and nuances within Black experiences.

  • Each collection begins with an introduction to the theme that presents and analyzes the context of the documents in conversation with one another, facilitating students’ comprehension of the textured, complicated stories of African Americans.
  • AP® Argumentation: DBQ Practice prompts offer practice for the AP® Exam, but they also make great discussion prompts.
  • Key Point notes in the margin of the introductions help students digest the most important contextual information and provide a foundation for actively reading the sources that follow.
  • As with the art program, several documents overlap with the required and optional AP® course sources.
  • Headnotes for each document offer students key context for the author, subject, audience, and purpose of the source.
  • Breaking It Down notes follow the headnotes, providing students with a specific task or key questions to focus their reading of the source.
  • Finally, a set of five Practicing AP® Skills questions invites students to apply course skills and reasoning. A Connecting to AP® Themes question allows students to link the documents to one of the four AP® course themes, and a DBQ completes the set—ideal practice for the skills needed to ace the presentation and oral defense of the Individual Student Projects that cap the AP® African American Studies course.

NEW! AP® Skills Workshops at the end of every chapter build essential skills in context.

From sourcing a primary document to developing a continuity and change argument to putting the Individual Student Project together, these workshops introduce, and help develop, essential AP® skills in context.

  • Recap boxes throughout the workshops serve as comprehension checks and reference points for student review.
  • Each workshop culminates in an activity that allows students to practice the skills they have just learned.

NEW! Integrated AP® Exam practice gets every student AP® ready.

  • At the end of every chapter, there is a set of Multiple-Choice Questions and a Short-Answer Question.
  • At the end of every unit, there is a set of Multiple-Choice Questions, three Short Answer Questions, and one Document Based Question.
  • A full practice AP® Exam is available at the back of the book.

New to This Edition

Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course, 3rd Edition by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course

Third Edition| ©2025

Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

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Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course, 3rd Edition by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course

Third Edition| 2025

Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Table of Contents

Unit 1 Origins of the African Diaspora
CHAPTER 1 African Origins, Beginnings to ca. 1600 C.E. 
CHAPTER 2 From Africa to America, 1441–1808 

Unit 2 Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance 
CHAPTER 3 Slavery in North America, 1619–1740 
CHAPTER 4 African Americans in the Age of Revolution, 1741–1783 
CHAPTER 5 Slavery and Freedom in the New Republic, 1775–1820 
CHAPTER 6 Black Life in the Slave South, 1820–1860 
CHAPTER 7 The Northern Black Freedom Struggle and the Coming of the Civil War, 1830–1860 
CHAPTER 8 Freedom Rising: The Civil War, 1861–1865 

Unit 3 The Practice of Freedom  
CHAPTER 9 Reconstruction: The Making and Unmaking of a Revolution, 1865–1877 
CHAPTER 10 Black Life and Culture during the Nadir, 1877–1915 
CHAPTER 11 The New Negro Comes of Age, 1915–1930 

Unit 4 Movements and Debates  
CHAPTER 12 Catastrophe, Recovery, and Renewal, 1930–1942 
CHAPTER 13 Fighting for a Double Victory in the World War II Era, 1938–1950 
CHAPTER 14 The Early Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1963 
CHAPTER 15 Multiple Meanings of Freedom: The Movement Broadens, 1961–1976 
CHAPTER 16 Racial Progress in an Era of Backlash and Change, 1965–2000 
CHAPTER 17 African Americans in the Twenty-First Century
Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course, 3rd Edition by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course

Third Edition| 2025

Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

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Authors

Headshot of Alysha Butler

Alysha Butler

Alysha Butler is a 24-year veteran social studies teacher who currently teaches AP® African American Studies and U.S. History for District of Columbia Public Schools. She has also served on the Development Committee for the AP® African American Studies course. As a Senior Program Manager for Inclusive Social Studies Curriculum for the Digital Team at GBH, she has developed and written online resources for PBS LearningMedia’s History and Civics Collections. She graduated from Florida Atlantic University with a B.A. and M.A. in History with a special focus on African American women during Reconstruction. She was awarded the 2024 Margaret Sue Copenhaver Contribution to Education Award, recognized as the 2019 History Teacher of the Year by the Daughters of the American Revolution for the District of Columbia, and was 2019 Gilder Lehrman National History Teacher of the Year for her innovative lessons and civics-based student projects. In 2019 she was a D.C. Community Cornerstone Awardee, and in 2020 she became the first teacher ever appointed to the Gilder Lehrman Board of Trustees. She has presented at the National Council for Social Studies Convention, the CCSSO Social Studies Collaborative, and the Middle States Council of Social Studies Convention. Her most recent published essays include “Why My Students Were Not Surprised on January 6th” and “Avoiding the Trap of Whitewashing the Founding Era: Teaching Black Liberation during the American Revolution.” She is also author of the chapter “Giving Honor and Teaching History in Life and Death: Teaching History and Civic Duty with the Preservation of Black Cemeteries” in Bringing Teachers to the History Museum: A Guide to Facilitating Teacher Professional Development (Rowman & Littlefield) and “Insurrection Nation” in Hot Button: Teaching Sensitive Social Studies Content (The Book House).


Headshot of Rachel Williams-Giordano

Rachel Williams-Giordano

Rachel Williams-Giordano is a high school social science teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds M.A.T. and M.Ed. degrees from Emmanuel College and a B.S. in Political Science from Georgia Southern University. Rachel has over 15 years of experience in the classroom and was a Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year finalist in 2023. She currently teaches AP® United States History, AP® United States Government and Politics, and AP® African American Studies, which she launched at Cambridge Rindge Latin School during its pilot phase. She has also served as a Reader and Question Leader for the AP® African American Studies Exam as well as a Reader for the AP® United States Government and Politics Exam. In addition to her work in the classroom, Rachel has mentored student teachers from Harvard University and Brandeis University, served as co-chair for the Faculty Advisory Committee at her school, and currently serves as a union representative. In her previous teaching roles at Boston Collegiate Charter School, Rachel developed a new curriculum for her ninth-grade Global Studies course and led the ninth-grade teaching team at Boston Collegiate Charter School. After five years at Boston Collegiate, Rachel was offered a principal fellowship with UP Education, which led to her accepting a role as Principal of Match Charter School, where she led instructional programming and supervised staff and students. As the lead APSI consultant nationally for the AP® African American Studies course since 2022, she facilitates the training of both new and experienced teachers nationwide.


Headshot of Deborah Gray White

Deborah Gray White

Deborah Gray White (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago) is Emeritus Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is the author of many works including Lost in the USA: American Identity from the Promise Keepers to the Million Mom March; Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994; Let My People Go: African-Americans, 1804–1860; Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South; and the edited volume Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower. She is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Woodrow Wilson International Center Fellowship. She holds the Carter G. Woodson Medallion and the Frederick Douglass Medal for excellence in African American history. She is a recipient of the Stephen A. Ambrose Oral History Award, and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Living Legacy Award. As co-editor of the three-volume Scarlet and Black series, White led the investigation of the three-century history of Native Americans and African Americans at Rutgers University.


Headshot of Mia Bay

Mia Bay

Mia Bay (Ph.D., Yale University) is the Paul A. Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. Her publications include the Bancroft Prize-winning Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance; To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells; The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830–1925; and the edited volume Ida B. Wells, The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader. She is a recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship and the National Humanities Center Fellowship. An Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, Bay is a member of the executive board of the Society of American Historians, serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of African American History, Modern Intellectual History, and the African American Intellectual History Society's Black Perspectives blog, and is on the Scholarly Advisory Board of the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Currently, she is at work on a study of African American views on Thomas Jefferson.


Headshot of Waldo Martin, Jr.

Waldo Martin, Jr.

Waldo E. Martin Jr. is the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of American History and Citizenship at the University of California, Berkeley. The principal focus of his scholarship and teaching is the Modern African American Freedom Struggle. With Joshua Bloom, he co-authored Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2013, rev. 2016). With Jetta Grace Martin and Joshua Bloom, he coauthored a Young Adult history of the party: Freedom! The Story of the Black Panther Party (Levine Querido, 2022). The second edition of his Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents was published in 2020. His first book, The Mind of Frederick Douglass, was published in 1985. His book of essays No Coward Soldiers: Black Cultural Politics in Postwar America came out in 2005. With Deborah Gray White and Mia Bay, he is the coauthor of Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans with Documents (2017). With Patricia A. Sullivan, he is the coeditor of Civil Rights in the US: An Encyclopedia (2 vols., 2000). His current book project is A Change Is Gonna Come, an analysis of the cultural politics of the modern African American freedom struggle.

Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course, 3rd Edition by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course

Third Edition| 2025

Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

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Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr. | Third Edition | ©2025 | ISBN:9781319607104
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Look Inside Look Inside Cover: Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course, 3rd Edition by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course

Third Edition| 2025

Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

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Look Inside Look Inside Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course by Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr. - Third Edition, 2025 from Macmillan Student Store

Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents, Updated for the AP® Course

Third Edition| 2025

Alysha Butler; Rachel Williams-Giordano; Deborah Gray White; Mia Bay; Waldo E. Martin Jr.

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01. Meet Alysha & Rachel

02. AP® AfAm: A Course with Soul

03. What are some misconceptions about the AP® AfAm course

04. What advice would you give a new AP® AfAm teacher?

05. What makes AP® Freedom on My Mind unique?

06. Challenges with Historical Complexity

07. AP® Practice Questions

08. DBQ Practice Prompts

09. The Document Project

10. Creating the AP® AfAm Course

11. Why are you excited about the AP® AfAm course?

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13. Meet Antoinette, Teacher's Edition author

14. Making Documents More Accessible for Students

15. Planning Pages in the Teacher's Edition

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