Tulsa Public Schools To Launch New Curriculum For Teaching The 1921 Race Massacre

Tulsa Public Schools will begin rolling out a new curriculum for teaching the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre beginning in May.

"We want to make sure that we are accurate, that we are engaging, that we are teaching our students to think critically and that we are offering them materials, but we also are not going to shy away from the fact that we are going to bring critical and powerful racially aware, bring a racially aware lens to this context and to this," said TPS Superintendent Dr. Deborah Gist at a Feb. 22 Board of Education meeting.

"We are not going to flinch away from that, because this is our history and we are here to address it," said Gist, who noted that she attended TPS herself and did not learn about the massacre until later in life while working in Florida.

The curriculum presented to the board last month was aided in its design by the Greenwood Cultural Center and the Oklahoma Historical Society. It is crafted to begin in kindergarten, addressing concepts of community and community-building using Greenwood and Black Wall Street as models, and, over a student's years in the district through high school graduation, will build up to discussions about racial violence, white supremacy, gentrification, reparations and more.