The state’s new standards are going out to schools as a national conversation on racial injustice brings new scrutiny to how African American history is taught nationwide.
A University of Texas professor involved in developing the curriculum, Kevin Cokley, said his college students say they are taught a sanitized version of black history in high school.
Tulsa schools instituted new standards two years ago, which the state Education Department used as a guide.
The commission is led by state Sen. Kevin Matthews, a Tulsa Democrat who said the new teaching standards haven’t faced opposition but that some people would have preferred to leave the massacre in the past.
LaGarrett King, director of the Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education at the University of Missouri, said he believes there is too much emphasis in the instruction of black history on violence, which is often centered on racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in a way that doesn’t explore nuances or apathy toward black deaths.
