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STATE OF OKLAHOMA
1st Session of the 59th Legislature (2023)
HOUSE BILL 1397 By: Lepak
AS INTRODUCED
An Act relating to schools; mandating curriculum
include a unit on the civil rights movement;
providing description of curriculum; directing the
State Superintendent of Public Instruction to prepare
and make available materials; providing for
codification; and providing an effective date .
BE IT ENACTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA:
SECTION 1. NEW LAW A new section of law to be codified
in the Oklahoma Statutes as Section 11-103.15 of Title 70, unless
there is created a duplication in numbering, reads as follows:
A. Every public elementary school and high school in the State
of Oklahoma shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction
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 an d 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
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organized to press for a rejection o f 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 immuta ble
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 sha ll include
an additional unit of instruction studying other acts of
discriminatory injustice, such as genocide, committed elsewhere
around the globe. This unit shall include, but not be limited to,
the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Chinese "Coolie" labor in
Cuba, the Uyghurs in China, and the Rohingya of Burma. 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 Repu blic, and to act in
opposition to injustice where ver it may occur.
B. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction shall prepare
and make available to all state public school boards instructional
materials that may be used as guidelines for development of a unit
of instruction under this act.
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SECTION 2. This act shall become eff ective November 1, 2023.
59-1-5079 MJ 11/16/22