Official Site of The State of New Jersey

Student learning and the inclusion of Africans and African Americans in the narrative of American and world history are at the heart of our mission. We are dedicated to ensuring that New Jersey’s public-school educators have the resources, training, and curriculum support necessary to accurately and meaningfully embed African and African American history across social studies, world history, and a broad range of other subject areas.

We proudly collaborate with educational partners across New Jersey to advance this important work and increase statewide awareness of the Amistad Commission and its mission.

The Amistad Commission’s primary goals are to:

1. Infuse the history and contributions of Africans and African Americans into the New Jersey K–12 curriculum, ensuring an accurate, complete, and inclusive representation of history.
2. Provide high-quality professional development, including in-service workshops, supportive resources and tools, and residential summer institutes for New Jersey educators.
3. Create curriculum support materials aligned with the New Jersey Student Learning Standards and revised Core Curriculum Content Standards.
4. Assist educators in developing effective lesson plans across various subject areas.
5. Survey, design, promote, and encourage educational programs that highlight the critical contributions of African Americans to the development of the United States.

On August 27, 2002, New Jersey enacted the “Amistad Bill” (A1301), sponsored by Assemblymen William D. Payne and Craig A. Stanley. The law established the Amistad Commission, named in honor of the enslaved Africans who fought for and won their freedom aboard the ship La Amistad in 1839.

The legislation mandates the creation and promotion of educational programs on the African slave trade, the history of slavery in America, and the many contributions of Africans and African Americans to the fabric of American society. This groundbreaking law represents a historic milestone for New Jersey and sets a national precedent for inclusive and comprehensive history education.

Initially, many educators and members of the public assumed the legislation would simply introduce African American history as an additional curricular component—similar to efforts implemented in other states such as Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Washington, and Georgia. Instead, New Jersey pursued a far more ambitious and transformative vision by establishing a comprehensive statewide Commission charged with systemic curricular integration.

The Amistad Commission is charged to survey, design, encourage, and promote the implementation of education and awareness programs in New Jersey concerned with the contributions of African-Americans in building our country including the nature of African civilizations, the African origins of African-Americans, their forced migration to the Americas, the nature of slavery and the responses of the enslaved, their roles in the construction of the American colonies and the Republic, the creation of African-American culture, the fight against slavery, the achievement of freedom, the ways in which African-Americans constructed their lives in freedom, their opposition to segregation, the establishment of black institutions, their literacy and cultural productions, the struggle for civil rights, and the contemporary black condition.  The Commission shall develop workshops, institutes, seminars and other teacher training activities designed to educate teachers on this subject matter; and shall be responsible for the coordination of events on a regular basis, throughout the State of New Jersey and provide appropriate memorialization of the events concerning the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in America as well as their struggle for freedom and liberty.

The Commission’s Teaching Resources and Educator Support Committee asserts that African Americans, and all others excluded from the national narrative, shaped this nation’s trajectory in important ways. The Commission also assert that the significance of African Americans, and others, has been devalued in K-12 classrooms. The primary work of this Commission is to provide an inclusive social studies and world history curriculum, especially in United States. The committee approached its work with thoughtful urgency.

The approach also affirms the need for schools to continue to offer separate courses on African Americans as a subfield of United States history. As in other subfields – women’s history, labor history, and ethnic histories – in African American history, scholars interpret the human story from within the African American experience, and through that lens, scholars reveal universal truths about the human experience. Much of the new interpretations of United States history emanate from knowledge discovered within subfields such as African American history.

The Amistad Commission is responsible for surveying, designing, encouraging, and promoting educational programs that illuminate the African American experience, including:

• The nature of African civilizations
• African origins of African Americans
• The forced migration and the Middle Passage
• The institution of slavery and resistance by the enslaved
• African Americans’ central role in the construction of the colonies and the nation
• The development of African American culture
• The struggle for freedom, abolition, and civil rights
• The creation of institutions that sustained Black communities Cultural, literary, and artistic contributions
• The ongoing quest for equity and justice

The Commission develops workshops, institutes, seminars, and training initiatives to prepare educators to teach this content confidently and accurately. It also coordinates statewide events and provides avenues for memorializing the experiences and achievements of Africans and African Americans throughout U.S. history.

The Commission’s Teaching Resources and Educator Support Committee affirms that African Americans—and many other groups historically excluded from traditional narratives—have shaped this nation in profound ways. Yet, their significance has often been minimized in K–12 classrooms. The Commission works with thoughtful urgency to correct these omissions and expand access to inclusive, research based curricula.

This approach also supports the continued offering of dedicated African American history courses as an essential subfield of United States history—akin to women’s history, labor history, and ethnic studies. Scholarship rooted in these subfields helps broaden and enrich our understanding of the American story and the universal human experience.