It was always clear that the attack on the Florida curriculum was politically motivated and meritless, since it is clearly part of the record that some slaves gained skills that they used to their benefit (this is not an endorsement of slavery — obviously, more African Americans would have gained skills, and benefited from them more, if there was no slavery).

Now, we have smoking-gun evidence of the political motivation in the fact that the AP curriculum says more or less exactly the same thing and didn’t generate a peep of protest:

By the way, David Hackett Fischer, who writes such wonderful, fine-grained histories, came out with a tremendous book touching on all of this not too long ago, African Founders.