The Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) has released a new landing page on its website that offers numerous opportunities to learn more about the Black experience in Oklahoma. Visit www.okhistory.org/blackhistory to start exploring. “Drawing attention to the legacy of racism is not enough to make permanent change,” said Dr. Bob Blackburn, executive director of the OHS. […]
segregation
Posted inNews
Local task force focuses on improving students’ lives
OKCPS’ Northeast Task Force works to develop recommendations for change in northeast Oklahoma City schools.
Posted inNews
Past, future collide for Martin Luther King observers
Thoughts on the work of MLK and the work that is left were heavy for many in Oklahoma City during a march to honor the civil rights icon.
Posted inNews
Should a former sundown town apologize?
The Thirteenth Amendment made slavery illegal, and the Civil Rights Act ended legal segregation. But these laws did not come with acknowledgments that the country erred in allowing those practices and hurting its own people. The city of Edmond prohibited African-Americans by ordinance from the city limits for generations. Royce Adamson’s 1940 postcard for his […]
Posted inNews
Remembering segregation
In those days, I was a teenager working as a waitress in the bus station in Checotah. When African Americans got off a bus and came up front to the restaurant section of the bus station for food, I had to tell them, “No.” They had to eat at a counter in back, behind the […]
Posted inNews
End academic segregation
Sadly, Oklahoma continues to practice a less obvious, but equally pernicious, form of segregation — one based on school size and inadequate academic offerings. Worst of all, recent legislation to address this injustice has been sidetracked by objections from the usual suspects who seem to resist every worthy school reform: the school administrators themselves. They […]