An original Thinka practice paper modelled on the structure and difficulty of the May 2025 AP AP African American Studies paper. Not affiliated with or reproduced from AP.
Section I Part B: Exam Day Validation
Respond to 1 prompt reflecting upon the sources and methodology of your Individual Student Project in complete sentences within 10 minutes.
1 Question · 2 marks
Question 1 · free-response
2 marks
Directions: Respond to the prompt in complete sentences based on the sources used in your Individual Student Project. You must reference your source(s) by title or author.
Explain how the historical context in which one of your primary sources was created shaped the author's perspective or purpose regarding your topic.
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Worked solution
To earn full credit (2 points), the response must: 1. Clearly name or identify a specific primary source used in the Individual Student Project. 2. Describe the relevant historical context in which the primary source was produced (e.g., specific laws, historical crises, social movements, or political environments of the era). 3. Fully explain how that specific context influenced or determined the author's perspective, goal, or purpose regarding the topic.
Example Response: "For my project on the early Civil Rights movement, one primary source I analyzed was Ida B. Wells's 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Wells wrote during the post-Reconstruction nadir, a time marked by widespread racial terror, lynchings, and the total lack of legal protection or due process for African Americans in the South. This context of rampant white supremacist violence and pervasive media disinformation directly shaped her perspective and purpose: her aim was to dismantle false southern narratives about Black criminality and mobilize northern and international economic boycotts to demand federal intervention and protect Black lives."
Marking scheme
Scoring Rubric (0–2 points):
• 0 points: The response does not meet the criteria for 1 point. It is overly vague, fails to identify a specific source from the student project, or does not address historical context. • 1 point: Responds to the prompt with relevant descriptive information, identifying a specific primary source and describing its historical context or perspective, but does not provide a complete explanation of how the context shaped the perspective/purpose. • 2 points: Responds to the prompt with a clear and thorough explanation of how the historical context in which a specific, named primary source was produced shaped the author's perspective or purpose regarding the project topic.
Scoring Notes: - Answers must be written in complete sentences. - The student must reference their source by name (either by title or author) to receive credit. - The explanation must establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship linking the era's conditions to the author's viewpoint or intent.
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Answer all three short-answer questions (one text-based stimulus, one visual/non-text stimulus, and one non-stimulus) in complete sentences within approximately 40 minutes.
3 Question · 10 marks
Question 1 · Short Answer
4 marks
“Only the BLACK WOMAN can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.’ ... We take our stand on the solidarity of humanity, the oneness of life, and the unnaturalness and injustice of all special favoritisms, whether of sex, race, country, or condition.”
— Source: Anna Julia Cooper, educator, scholar, and activist, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South, 1892
Respond to parts A, B, C, and D.
A. Describe one claim the author makes in the source.
B. Describe one historical challenge or barrier faced by African American women in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century that reflects the context of the excerpt.
C. Using a specific example, explain how an African American woman or organization advocated for racial uplift or social equality between 1890 and 1930.
D. Describe one way twenty-first-century African American activism or scholarship continues to address the intersection of race and gender.
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Worked solution
Part A (1 mark): - The student must describe a specific claim from the text. Acceptable claims include: 1. The progress of the entire African American community is inseparable from and dependent upon the elevation and autonomy of Black women. 2. Human rights and social progress must reject all hierarchies based on sex, race, class, or condition, affirming a universal solidarity of humanity.
Part B (1 mark): - The student must describe a distinct historical barrier/challenge facing African American women in the late 19th or early 20th century. Acceptable examples include: 1. Dual marginalization / "double jeopardy": Facing both Jim Crow racial restrictions and patriarchal gender restrictions. 2. Exclusion from mainstream white suffrage organizations (such as NAWSA marching restrictions in the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession). 3. Disenfranchisement through poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation even after the passage of the 19th Amendment. 4. Widespread economic exploitation, where Black women were predominantly barred from professional fields and concentrated in poorly compensated domestic work or sharecropping.
Part C (1 mark): - The student must explain how a specific individual or organization advocated for racial uplift between 1890 and 1930. Acceptable responses include: 1. Ida B. Wells: Researched and published anti-lynching pamphlets (e.g., Southern Horrors, A Red Record) to expose racial terror, and co-founded the Alpha Suffrage Club to mobilize Black women voters. 2. National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and Mary Church Terrell: Championed the motto "Lifting As We Climb," establishing nurseries, nursing homes, and educational programs while lobbying against Jim Crow and lynching. 3. Nannie Helen Burroughs: Established the National Training School for Women and Girls (1909) in Washington, D.C., to provide Black women with vocational and academic skills for economic autonomy. 4. Mary McLeod Bethune: Founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls (1904) to foster education, leadership, and community development.
Part D (1 mark): - The student must describe how 21st-century Black activism or scholarship addresses race and gender intersections. Acceptable examples include: 1. Intersectionality: Legal scholars and activists (such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and the #SayHerName campaign) highlight how Black women's experiences of police brutality and institutional bias are often overlooked. 2. Modern movements: Coalitions like Black Lives Matter (co-founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi) center Black women and queer activists in advocating for racial, criminal justice, and reproductive equity.
Marking scheme
General Scoring Guidelines: - Each part (A, B, C, D) is scored independently and is worth 1 point (maximum 4 points total). - Responses must be written in complete sentences.
Part A (1 point): - 1 pt: Accurately describes one claim made in the text (e.g., the advancement of Black women brings about the progress of the entire race; rejection of favoritism based on race or sex). - 0 pt: Mere quote without description, inaccurate summary, or unrelated claim.
Part B (1 point): - 1 pt: Accurately describes a historical barrier or challenge faced by African American women in the late 19th/early 20th century (e.g., racial discrimination within the suffrage movement, dual oppression of racism and sexism, economic concentration in domestic servitude). - 0 pt: Vague generalization without historical detail or inaccurate time period.
Part C (1 point): - 1 pt: Explains how a named African American woman or organization (e.g., Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, NACW, Nannie Helen Burroughs) worked for racial uplift/civil rights within the specified window (1890–1930). - 0 pt: Figure outside the specified timeframe (e.g., 1960s Civil Rights figures like Rosa Parks or Angela Davis), or merely names a person without explaining their actions.
Part D (1 point): - 1 pt: Describes a contemporary (21st-century) manifestation of Black activism or scholarship addressing race and gender (e.g., intersectionality framework, #SayHerName, Black Lives Matter, Black feminist legal theory). - 0 pt: Fails to connect race and gender, or cites historic pre-2000 examples exclusively.
Question 2 · free-response
3 marks
Source: Map and architectural sketch of Fort Mose (Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose), Florida, established in 1738 as a fortified settlement and military outpost north of St. Augustine, Spanish Florida.
Respond to parts A, B, and C.
A. Describe one way the site depicted serves as evidence of Black resistance and autonomy in colonial North America.
B. Describe the broader historical context that allowed Fort Mose to be established in Spanish Florida in the eighteenth century.
C. Explain one reason why enslaved Africans utilized cross-border or geographic flight to challenge chattel slavery in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.
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Worked solution
Part A: Fort Mose was founded in 1738 as the first legally recognized free Black settlement in what is now the United States. It provides tangible evidence of Black resistance because the inhabitants were self-emancipated men and women who had escaped chattel slavery on British plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. They established their own autonomous settlement with housing, agriculture, and a fortified post, and they formed a free Black militia led by Francisco Menéndez to defend their community against British recapturers.
Part B: In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, imperial competition raged between the British colony of Carolina/Georgia and Spanish Florida. To destabilize the British plantation economy and bolster their own sparsely populated colonial defenses, Spanish authorities issued royal decrees offering freedom to runaway enslaved Africans from British territories on the conditions that they convert to Catholicism and pledge loyalty to the Spanish crown. This geopolitical rivalry directly led to the founding of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.
Part C: Enslaved Africans engaged in geographic and cross-border flight (such as escaping to Florida before 1819, moving northward to Canada via the Underground Railroad, or crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico after its abolition of slavery) because chattel slavery relied on local legal statutes and slave patrol systems. Crossing borders into jurisdictions that did not recognize slaveholders' property claims stripped enslavers of legal recourse and the protection of local fugitive laws, allowing formerly enslaved people to build secure, autonomous lives beyond the reach of slave catchers.
Marking scheme
General Scoring Notes: - Each part is scored independently (1 point each, total 3 points). - Responses must be written in complete sentences. - Accuracy and discipline-specific terminology are required.
Part A (1 point): - 1 point for a historically defensible description of how Fort Mose serves as evidence of Black resistance/autonomy (e.g., noting that formerly enslaved people established an independent fortified settlement, formed their own militia under Black leadership such as Francisco Menéndez, or built autonomous cultural and familial networks outside the plantation regime). - 0 points for vague or inaccurate assertions (e.g., stating only that Black people lived in Florida without noting freedom or military/settlement autonomy).
Part B (1 point): - 1 point for a historically defensible description of the broader historical context (e.g., imperial conflicts between Spain and Britain, Spanish sanctuary policy/royal edicts offering freedom to fugitives who converted to Catholicism, or the use of Black militias to defend Spanish borders against British incursions). - 0 points for incorrect chronology or context (e.g., confusing the 18th-century Spanish colonial policy with the 19th-century Civil War or Reconstruction).
Part C (1 point): - 1 point for explaining how cross-border or geographic flight challenged chattel slavery (e.g., explaining that crossing into different colonial/national jurisdictions like Canada, Mexico, or Spanish Florida nullified enslavers' property rights and evaded fugitive recovery laws; or explaining how establishing remote maroon settlements in swamps or mountains denied labor to the plantation system while fostering collective self-defense). - 0 points for merely mentioning a destination without explaining how or why the cross-border movement served to overcome or challenge the institution of enslavement.
Question 3 · Free-Response
3 marks
Respond to parts A, B, and C.
A. Describe one form of covert or everyday resistance practiced by enslaved African Americans prior to 1865.
B. Describe one way independent Black institutions, such as mutual aid societies or churches, promoted community autonomy in the late eighteenth or nineteenth century.
C. Using a specific example, explain how African American abolitionists used print media or public oratory to challenge enslavement in the nineteenth century.
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Worked solution
Part A (1 point): A complete response must accurately describe a form of covert or everyday resistance utilized by enslaved people prior to 1865. Acceptable descriptions include: - Sabotaging plantation production by slowing labor routines, feigning ignorance/illness, or breaking farming equipment. - Preserving forbidden cultural and spiritual traditions in clandestine gatherings ('brush arbors' or 'hush harbors'). - Communicating covertly through spirituals and work songs containing coded directional signals or double entendres regarding freedom and escape. - Clandestine acquisition of literacy (learning to read and write) despite legal prohibitions.
Part B (1 point): A complete response must accurately describe how early independent Black institutions fostered autonomy in the late 18th or 19th century. Acceptable descriptions include: - The establishment of independent denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones allowed African Americans to worship without racial segregation and cultivate independent leadership. - Mutual aid organizations like the Free African Society pooled collective financial resources to provide sick benefits, widow support, and proper burial services to community members without reliance on white patronage. - Churches and civic groups operated as foundational community centers that established independent schools and promoted literacy.
Part C (1 point): A complete response must explain how an African American abolitionist used print culture or oratorical platforms to advocate against enslavement in the 19th century using a specific example. Acceptable explanations include: - Frederick Douglass used his newspaper The North Star and his autobiographical narratives to dispel racist myths about Black intellectual inferiority and persuade Northern audiences of the moral imperative of immediate abolition. - David Walker published Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829), using radical print pamphlets sewn into sailors' coats to call for unified Black resistance and armed struggle against slavery. - Maria Stewart delivered public lectures in Boston in the 1830s, becoming one of the first American women of any race to speak publicly against slavery and advocate for civil and economic rights for Black people.
Marking scheme
General Scoring Notes: - Each point is earned independently (1 point for Part A, 1 point for Part B, 1 point for Part C). - Accuracy: Responses must demonstrate historically defensible, discipline-specific content knowledge. - Describe: Requires providing the relevant characteristics of a specified topic (more than simply mentioning a term). - Explain: Requires providing information about how or why a historical process occurs or why a relationship exists.
Part A (1 point): - 1 point: Accurately describes one form of covert/everyday resistance practiced by enslaved African Americans prior to 1865. - 0 points: Vaguely mentions an isolated term (e.g., 'rebellion') without description or focuses on overt military rebellion/marronage without answering everyday resistance.
Part B (1 point): - 1 point: Accurately describes one specific way mutual aid societies, independent Black churches, or fraternal orders fostered Black autonomy in the 18th or 19th century. - 0 points: Provides an overly general assertion without explaining institutional autonomy or cites an inaccurate timeframe.
Part C (1 point): - 1 point: Uses a specific historical example (e.g., Frederick Douglass, David Walker, Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) to explain how print culture or speeches challenged slavery. - 0 points: Fails to name a specific historical figure/publication or does not explain how the method worked to challenge enslavement.
Section II Part B: Document-Based Question
Write an evidence-based argumentative essay in response to the prompt using at least three of the five provided historical sources, contextualization, and outside evidence within approximately 45 minutes.
1 Question · 7 marks
Question 1 · Document-Based Essay
7 marks
Explain how African American grassroots organizations and student activists advanced the struggle for civil rights and political power between 1955 and 1975.
In your response, you should do the following: - Respond to the prompt with a defensible thesis or claim establishing a line of reasoning. - Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt. - Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least three of the provided sources. - Incorporate at least one piece of specific historical evidence beyond what is found in the sources. - For at least two sources, explain how or why the source’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, or intended audience is relevant to your argument. - Demonstrate complex understanding through historical reasoning (such as causation, comparison, or continuity and change).
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### Source 1 Source: Excerpt from the founding statement of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), drafted at the Southwide Youth Leadership Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, May 1960.
> “We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and the manner of our action. A nonviolent approach cultivates in human relations that which is moral and of value. It grows out of hope in the goodness of humanity and reconciles that which has been alienated. Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope ends despair. Peace dominates conflict; justice overpowers injustice. By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral high ground, we seek a social order of brotherhood grounded in justice and democratic ideals.”
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### Source 2 Source: Excerpt from Ella Baker’s address, “Bigger than a Hamburger,” published in The Southern Courier, June 1960.
> “The young people who sat down at segregated lunch counters across the South were seeking something far deeper than the right to purchase a meal. They were demanding the full rights of human dignity, democratic inclusion, and first-class citizenship. What we need now is not centralized domination by established personalities, but decentralized, group-centered leadership rooted in local communities. When ordinary people realize their own collective power to transform their surroundings, true democracy becomes possible from the ground up.”
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### Source 3 Source: Data table adapted from the records of the Voter Education Project (VEP) documenting registered Black voters across selected southern states (1960 vs. 1968).
### Source 4 Source: Excerpt from the Ten-Point Program of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, drafted in Oakland, California, October 1966.
> “1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. > 2. We want full employment for our people. > 3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black Community. > 4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings. > 5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. > 6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.... > 7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people. > 8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.... > 10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.”
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### Source 5 Source: Excerpt from a speech delivered by Angela Davis at an anti-repression rally in New York City, 1971.
> “The struggle cannot be confined solely to legal courtroom battles or polite legislative compromises. Black students, workers, and community members are building international coalitions that connect our fight against domestic racial oppression with liberation movements in the Global South. Genuine freedom will not arrive simply because the existing institutions grant modest reforms; it requires our organized communities to challenge structural poverty, state-sanctioned violence, and imperialist aggression simultaneously.”
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Worked solution
Sample High-Scoring Essay:
Following World War II and the subsequent 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Black Americans encountered persistent Jim Crow segregation, systemic disfranchisement, and economic subjugation across the United States. While early legal strategies by organizations like the NAACP dismantled de jure segregation in courts, grassroots groups and young organizers emerged as the catalyst for sweeping institutional transformation. Between 1955 and 1975, African American grassroots organizations and student activists advanced the civil rights struggle and expanded political power by utilizing direct nonviolent mass action to break segregation, conducting localized community voter registration drives to build electoral strength, and redefining liberation through radical economic, community self-defense, and anti-imperialist platforms.
To begin with, youth-led grassroots activism shifted the movement's momentum from slow courtroom battles to immediate direct confrontation with Jim Crow. In 1960, young Black organizers founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), making nonviolent civil disobedience the spiritual and tactical cornerstone of their movement to appeal to national conscience and break racial subjugation (Source 1). Rather than accepting traditional, hierarchical command structures, figures like Ella Baker argued that the sit-in movement represented a fundamental push for human dignity that required decentralized, community-driven leadership (Source 2). Baker's perspective as a seasoned activist mentoring youth allowed her to articulate the vision that true political power came when local residents organized themselves, laying the framework for bottom-up mobilization.
Furthermore, grassroots voter registration efforts substantially redistributed southern political power. As demonstrated by registration figures between 1960 and 1968, southern Black registration grew dramatically, highlighted by a staggering 1,041% increase in Mississippi and over 300% in Alabama (Source 3). This dramatic shift was directly generated by grassroots initiatives such as the 1964 Freedom Summer organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) and the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the all-white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Beyond the provided data, student activists from SNCC and CORE endured harassment and violence to establish Freedom Schools and register rural voters, which pressured the federal government into passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and transformed southern municipal elections.
As the movement evolved into the late 1960s and 1970s, activist priorities expanded from integration to Black Power, urban self-determination, and anti-war coalition building. The Black Panther Party in Oakland articulated a Ten-Point Program demanding self-determination, an end to police brutality, guaranteed employment, community housing, and Black-centered education (Source 4). The Panthers put these principles into practice through Survival Programs, such as the Free Breakfast for Children Program. Concurrently, activists like Angela Davis linked domestic civil rights struggles with international liberation and anti-imperialist movements, arguing that Black freedom demanded dismantling structural poverty and state repression (Source 5). Davis spoke to an audience of activists to foster solidarity between urban Black struggles and global anti-colonial wars, such as the Vietnam War.
In conclusion, grassroots and student activists transformed the Black freedom struggle from 1955 to 1975. By moving from nonviolent desegregation to grassroots voter enfranchisement and urban self-defense platforms, these youth-driven movements reshaped American democratic institutions and fundamentally redefined the meaning of political power.
Marking scheme
### AP Document-Based Question (DBQ) Scoring Breakdown (7 Points Total)
#### Row A: Thesis / Claim (0–1 point) - 1 point: Formulates a defensible thesis/claim establishing a clear line of reasoning addressing how grassroots and student activists advanced civil rights and political power (1955–1975). - Reject: Mere restatements of the prompt or broad assertions lacking a line of reasoning.
#### Row B: Contextualization (0–1 point) - 1 point: Situates the prompt within a broader historical context (e.g., Cold War pressures, the limitations of post-WWII legal gains, Brown v. Board, de facto segregation in northern/western cities, anti-colonial movements in Africa/Asia).
#### Row C: Evidence from Sources (0–2 points) - 1 point: Accurately describes the content of at least two sources to address the topic. - 2 points: Uses the content of at least three sources to support an argument in response to the prompt.
#### Row D: Evidence Beyond the Sources (0–1 point) - 1 point: Integrates at least one specific, relevant historical piece of evidence outside the documents (e.g., Freedom Summer, Greensboro sit-ins, Freedom Rides, Black Panther Free Breakfast Program, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Selma March, Voting Rights Act of 1965).
#### Row E: Sourcing (0–1 point) - 1 point: For at least two sources, explains how or why the source’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, or intended audience is relevant to the argument. - Example (Source 1/2): Explaining Baker’s purpose in fostering non-hierarchical, local leadership among youth. - Example (Source 4/5): Explaining Davis's or the Panthers' perspective connecting domestic racism to systemic class oppression or international anti-colonialism.
#### Row F: Historical Reasoning / Complexity (0–1 point) - 1 point: Demonstrates a complex understanding through structured historical reasoning (causation, comparison, or continuity and change over time across the 1955–1975 timeframe, such as the shift from nonviolent integration to systemic Black Power/economic self-determination).
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