Beginning this college 12 months, the Faculty Board is piloting a brand new Superior Placement (AP) course in 60 unnamed excessive colleges: AP African American Research. That is the primary new AP class the Faculty Board has provided since 2014, and it’s about time.

AP courses are a considerably contentious subject. Whereas AP courses supply highschool college students an opportunity to earn faculty credit and acquire a aggressive edge, many have pointed to the truth that AP courses are sometimes taught in wealthier districts with predominantly white demographics. And, provided that historical past is tends to be informed from the slim perspective of the “winners,” any AP historical past courses accessible have been centered on American or European historical past. This new AP African American Research course is a step in the best route when it comes to fairness and inclusivity.

The course will cowl over 400 years of African American historical past, in accordance with TIME, and can span matters corresponding to literature, political science, and geography. Henry-Louis Gates, Jr., one of many nation’s main consultants on African American historical past, helped form the brand new AP course.

“AP African American Research is just not CRT,” Gates, Jr. informed TIME. A number of states, together with Florida, have banned Crucial Race Idea (CRT) from the classroom. “It’s not the 1619 Mission. It’s a mainstream, rigorously vetted, educational method to a vibrant discipline of examine, one half a century previous within the American academy, and far older, after all, in traditionally Black faculties and universities.”

The course consists of in-depth classes on Malcolm X and the Black Panther Get together’s free breakfast and medical packages; the Reconstruction Period and the way it has formed mass incarceration right now; and the way to take a look at discrimination via overlapping racial and gender identities.

It is a course that many have been requesting for fairly a while, and the Faculty Board mentioned it was a decade within the making. Beforehand, the Board didn’t supply a category as a result of many surveyed faculties mentioned they might not settle for faculty credit score for the category. When requested once more in 2020, extra faculties weren’t solely open however keen to simply accept course credit for AP African American Research.

“The occasions surrounding George Floyd and the elevated consciousness and a spotlight paid in direction of problems with inequity and unfairness and brutality directed in direction of African Individuals precipitated me to surprise, ‘Would faculties be extra receptive to an AP course on this self-discipline than they have been 10 years in the past?’” Trevor Packer, head of the Faculty Board’s AP program, informed TIME.

The course will probably be provided to a complete of 200 excessive colleges subsequent 12 months, in accordance with CBS, earlier than it rolls out nationwide beginning within the 2024-2025 college 12 months.