< Oklahoma restricted how race can be taught. So these Black teachers stepped up

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

In 2021, Oklahoma's Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill restricting how race and gender can be taught in public schools. Teachers found to violate the law can lose their teaching credential, so now many tiptoe around those topics or avoid them all together. In Tulsa, Black teachers and parents weren't happy that their children might not get access to honest lessons about race, so they did something about it. NPR's Adrian Florido reports from Tulsa.

ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: When Governor Kevin Stitt signed that bill two years ago, Kristi Williams, a longtime leader and activist in Tulsa's Black community, was angry.

KRISTI WILLIAMS: And it's sad because you're like, why are people working so hard to keep us from learning about who we are?

FLORIDO: The law prohibits teachers from teaching certain, in the bill's language, quote, "discriminatory principles" - for example, that a person should feel guilt or discomfort because of their race or gender or that they are inherently racist or oppressive because of their race or sex - things the bill's critics said teachers have never actually taught. But when Kristi Williams spoke with teachers, they told her the chilling effect was real.

WILLIAMS: So now you have educators who are like, I'm just going to stay away from anything that's talking about race.

FLORIDO: Williams had been thinking for years about starting a program where kids in Tulsa could come to learn the kinds of lessons in Black history not usually taught in school curricula. The new law finally did it for her.

WILLIAMS: It just pushed me. It was the time. I knew what - I said, I have to make this happen, and so here I am.

(CROSSTALK)

FLORIDO: She called it Black History Saturdays, and it happens once a month in a private community center in North Tulsa. In the cafeteria, Williams stands in front of a few dozen people, parents and their children, all African American, and leads their pledge.

WILLIAMS: We will remember the humanity...

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: We will remember the humanity...

WILLIAMS: ...Glory...

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: ...Glory...

WILLIAMS: ...And suffering of our ancestors...

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: ...And suffering of our ancestors...

WILLIAMS: ...And honor the struggle of our elders.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: ...And honor the struggle of our elders.

FLORIDO: Then, the children head off into the classrooms according to their grade.

WILLIAMS: OK, any third- to fifth-graders?

FLORIDO: In the class for kindergartners, teacher Areyell Scott shows Caiya Nemons a picture of Ruby Bridges, the little girl who desegregated a public elementary school in New Orleans in 1960.

AREYELL SCOTT: Look up there. Who is that?

CAIYA NEMONS: Ruby Bridges.

SCOTT: Ruby Bridges. And where did she go?

CAIYA: To school.

SCOTT: To school with a whole bunch of what?

CAIYA: White people?

SCOTT: White people. And did the white people like her?

CAIYA: No.

SCOTT: No.

FLORIDO: Scott says it's important not to sugarcoat the lesson's racist truth but also to frame Ruby Bridges as an inspiration.

SCOTT: She was able to change the trajectory of what all little colored children could be exposed to, and that's what we want to show the little girl that's in our class.

FLORIDO: In another class, Angela Mitchell helps two boys build a paper model of Black Wall Street, the Black business district in Tulsa that a white mob burned to the ground in 1921 during one of the worst race massacres in U.S. history.

ANGELA MITCHELL: So T.T.'s theme park. That's going to be cool because the original Black Wall Street did not have a theme park.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Oh. What's - it's, like, a mini theme park.

FLORIDO: Mitchell likes to motivate kids by emphasizing Black achievement. But even that, she says, was made harder by the law targeting race in education. She taught at a public school when it took effect.

MITCHELL: The school I was working at was actually a school that celebrated Black excellence. But when that bill passed, the first thing they told us was that had to stop.

FLORIDO: One of those principles the law prohibits teaching is that one race is superior to another - again, Mitchell says, something teachers never have taught. But she says her school's leaders were worried of being accused.

MITCHELL: So yes, all the people at the top had to make the choice that we could not, as teachers, teach our kids Black excellence - again, not one race is superior to another - simply that you are amazing because of who you are.

FLORIDO: Mitchell left that job out of frustration and moved to a charter school. When Kristi Williams was recruiting teachers for Black History Saturdays, Mitchell jumped at the idea. Williams says many teachers she asked, did not, though.

WILLIAMS: They said, Kristi, I love the idea. I really love the idea. But I'm afraid I may lose my certification.

FLORIDO: No Oklahoma teachers have yet lost their job because of the law, but the state Board of Education did vote to downgrade the Tulsa district's accreditation after a teacher complained that a racial bias training shamed white people. Kristi Williams says that, amid this climate, the kinds of lessons on race that her teachers are offering students outside their normal classrooms are all the more important.

WILLIAMS: The uncomfortable parts, the good parts - they're getting all of that, and they're getting to experience it with their families.

FLORIDO: Kenya Debose is a sixth-grader. She says when her grandmother first signed her up for this...

KENYA DEBOSE: I wasn't too excited about it, especially for waking up early.

FLORIDO: On a Saturday. Her grandmother is Pamela Scott Vickers.

PAMELA SCOTT VICKERS: (Laughter) Yes, she did. She had to get up early. And grandmother Pam - what I wanted to do was say to myself as well as to them - you don't always do things that are comfortable for you. Sometimes, there's a sacrifice.

FLORIDO: Now Kenya likes to come, she says, because she learns things she doesn't at her regular school.

KENYA: I - actually happy that I'm here to learn more from my culture.

FLORIDO: Dewayne Dickens is a community college professor who signed up to teach the high-school class here because he refuses to let Black children lose access to honest Black history.

DEWAYNE DICKENS: We're reclaiming this. We can teach our children, and we can do it better. That does not preclude the need that it should be part of the public educational system. That is a sad part, but the celebrated part is that we are doing it ourselves.

FLORIDO: What other choice did he have? - he asked. None.

Adrian Florido, NPR News, Tulsa.

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