2023 Oklahoma Statutes
Title 70. Schools
§70-11-103.6p. Civil rights curriculum.

A. The State Department of Education shall develop and make available to every public elementary school and high school in the State of Oklahoma, a curriculum that may be taught as a stand-alone unit of instruction, or may be integrated into one or more existing courses of study, studying the events of the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1968, the natural law and natural rights principles that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., drew from that informed his leadership of the civil rights movement, and the tactics and strategies of nonviolent resistance that he championed in response to the Jim Crow laws of that era. This period in American history is known as the civil rights era because during this period reform-minded Americans organized to press for a rejection of the doctrine of "separate but equal" and to repeal the Jim Crow-era laws in parts of the United States that embodied that doctrine. One of the universal lessons of the civil rights era is that hatred on the basis of immutable characteristics, including not just race or ethnicity, but also characteristics such as nationality, religious belief, disability, or sex, can overtake any nation or society, leading to profound injustice. To reinforce that lesson, such curriculum shall include an additional unit of instruction studying other acts of discriminatory injustice, such as genocide, committed elsewhere around the globe. The study of this material is a reaffirmation of the commitment of the people of this state to reject bigotry, to champion equal protection under the law as a foundational principle of our Republic, and to act in opposition to injustice wherever it may occur.

B. The State Department of Education shall identify resources and provide exemplar units or sample lesson plans designed to help teachers provide instruction on the subject matter outlined in this act.

Added by Laws 2023, c. 156, § 1, eff. Nov. 1, 2023.