SB 967

SECOND REGULAR SESSION
  SENATE BILL NO. 967
  103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY
  INTRODUCED BY SENATOR MOSLEY.
 3808S.01I  KRISTINA MARTIN, Secretary
  AN ACT
 To amend chapter 161, RSMo, by adding thereto one new section relating to black history
  education in public schools.
 Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, as follows:
1Section A. Chapter 161, RSMo, is amended by adding thereto
2  one new section, to be known as section 161.710, to read as
3  follows:
1161.710.  1. This section shall be known and may be
2  cited as the "Black History Education and Awareness
3  Commission Act".
42.     There is hereby created a permanent state
5  commission known as the "Black History Education and
6  Awareness Commission".  The commission shall be housed in
7  the department of elementary and secondary education and
8  shall promote implementation of education and awareness
9  programs that increase students' understanding of the
10  history, experiences, and achievements of black people in
11  this state and across the country, in accordance with the
12  instructional topics outlined in subsection 6 of this
13  section.
143.     The commission shall be composed of the following
15  thirteen members:
16(1)      The commissioner of elementary and secondary
17  education;
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18(2)    The commissioner of higher education;
19(3)    The president of Harris-Stowe State University;
20(4)    The superintendent of any school district where at
21 least fifty percent of the students enrolled in such
22 district are black, as confirmed by demographic data
23 provided to the department of elementary and secondary
24 education, to be appointed by the governor with the advice
25 and consent of the senate, and to serve a term of three
26 years; and
27(5)    Nine members of the public, representative of
28 civil rights groups, racial justice organizations, and black
29 professional organizations in Missouri, including, but not
30 limited to, the National Association for the Advancement of
31 Colored People, to be appointed by the governor with the
32 advice and consent of the senate, and to serve terms of
33 three years each, except that of the initial appointments,
34 three members shall be appointed for a term of three years,
35 three members shall be appointed for a term of two years,
36 and three members shall be appointed for a term of one year.
374.    The black history education and awareness
38 commission may receive such funds as are appropriated by the
39 general assembly or contributed by private sources.        The
40 commission may sponsor programs or publications to educate
41 the public about black history.        The commission may employ
42 an executive director and such other persons as are
43 necessary to carry out its functions.
445.    To educate students about the history, experiences,
45 and achievements of black people in this state and across
46 the country, and to inspire in students a sense of
47 responsibility to recognize and uphold human value and to
48 prevent bigotry, the first full week in February shall be
49 designated as "Black History Week".
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506.    The black history week curriculum described in this
51 subsection shall be taught during a week as determined by
52 each school district beginning in the 2029-2030 school year
53 and in each subsequent school year, and shall include age-
54 appropriate instruction to students not lower than the sixth
55 grade.        Such instruction shall include, but not be limited
56 to, the following topics:
57(1)    A detailed history of Africa, including, but not
58 limited to, the birth of humanity in Africa, initial
59 migrations of Africans out of Africa and into all continents
60 and islands of the Earth, the development of black African
61 civilizations, including, but not limited to, Egypt, Nubia,
62 Kush, Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana, Songhay, Benin, Kanem-Bornu,
63 and Great Zimbabwe; the effects of slavery and colonialism
64 upon African societies; African independence movements; and
65 modern-day Africa;
66(2)    Pre-Columbian contact between the indigenous
67 Native Americans and Africans, including contact,
68 visitation, interaction, and trade between Native Americans
69 with Egypt and Mali, as well as settlements of Egyptians and
70 Malians in both North and South America;
71(3)    The hypocrisy of the phrase "all men are created
72 equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
73 unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
74 the Pursuit of Happiness" in the Declaration of
75 Independence, given the enslavement of millions of human
76 beings in the United States;
77(4)    Slavery provisions in the United States
78 Constitution;
79(5)    The distinction between lifetime chattel slavery
80 instituted in the Americas and old-world slavery;
81(6)    The economics of slavery;
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82(7)   The following topics related to slavery in the
83  United States:
84(a)   Slave breeding;
85(b)   Buck breaking;
86(c)   The rape of slaves;
87(d)   The mutilation of slaves;
88(e)   The castration of slaves;
89(f)   The murder of slaves;
90(g)   The starvation of slaves;
91(h)   The poor clothing of slaves;
92(i)   Destroying slave families through the selling of
93  single members of slave families away from the family;
94(j)   Forcing slaves to work from sunup to sundown;
95(k)   The cruel and unusual punishment of slaves;
96(l)   The whipping of slaves;
97(m)   The shackling of slaves;
98(n)   A list of Presidents of the United States who
99  owned slaves, to wit, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
100 James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van
101 Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk,
102 Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant;
103(o)   Slave revolts;
104(p)   The burning and branding of slaves;
105(q)   The Fugitive Slave Act;
106(r)   The Underground Railroad;
107(s)   Prohibitions against teaching slaves how to read
108 and write; and
109(t)   Laws providing that conversion to Christianity did
110 not emancipate a slave;
111(8)   The participation of blacks in the Revolutionary
112 War and broken promises of freedom if they fought on the
113 side of the colonies;
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114(9)    The participation of blacks in the Civil War;
115(10)    That as many as fifty million Africans lost their
116 lives during the four-hundred-year slave trade;
117(11)    The fact that the Emancipation Proclamation did
118 not free any slaves when issued by President Abraham Lincoln
119 due to the fact that Lincoln did not apply it to the four
120 slave states that did not secede from the Union,
121 specifically Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky, nor
122 to the three slave states that seceded but were under Union
123 control at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation,
124 specifically Louisiana, Virginia, and Tennessee, and that
125 the Emancipation Proclamation could not be enforced in the
126 remaining eight slave states that made up the Confederacy
127 since such states were under the control of the Confederacy;
128(12)    That over one million Africans remained enslaved
129 in the United States on June 19, 1865, "Juneteenth", since
130 the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to all slaves in
131 the United States;
132(13)    That the emancipation of all slaves in the United
133 States occurred on December 6, 1865, the date the Thirteenth
134 Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified
135 abolishing slavery in the United States;
136(14)    That the Thirteenth Amendment allowed one to be
137 enslaved for conviction of crime, which led to the former
138 Confederate slave states' passage of the "Black Codes",
139 which allowed for conviction of black people for trumped-up
140 crimes such as loitering and vagrancy, the imprisonment of
141 black people for such crimes, and the government leasing of
142 those black people to work, without pay, like slaves to
143 white-owned businesses, farmers, and manufacturers;
144(15)    The race massacres throughout the United States
145 following the Civil War, and particularly the bombing and
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146 destruction of the black owned and occupied Rosewood
147 business and residential district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and
148 East St. Louis, Illinois;
149(16)   The violent overthrow of elected black
150 governmental officials of Wilmington, North Carolina, by a
151 white seditionist mob with no response by the state or
152 federal governments;
153(17)   Black reconstruction of the South;
154(18)   The compromise ending reconstruction;
155(19)   Buffalo Soldiers;
156(20)   The participation of blacks in the Spanish-
157 American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and
158 the Vietnam War;
159(21)   Discrimination against black veterans;
160(22)   Discrimination against black West Point cadets;
161(23)   Discrimination against black soldiers and attacks
162 against black soldiers coming home from wars;
163(24)   The forced retirement of the highest-ranking
164 black Army officer, Colonel Charles Young, in order to avoid
165 promoting him as the first black Brigadier General solely
166 because he was black;
167(25)   Black inventions and inability of black inventors
168 to get loans or investments to develop their inventions;
169(26)   President Woodrow Wilson's aid to the revival of
170 the Ku Klux Klan and Wilson's ordering segregation of
171 governmental facilities and employees during his term of
172 office between 1913 and 1921;
173(27)   Laws mandating discrimination and segregation on
174 the basis of race;
175(28)   The real estate practices of redlining and
176 restrictive covenants;
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177(29)   Prohibitions against black athletes in
178 professional and amateur sports;
179(30)   Laws prohibiting interracial marriages;
180(31)   President Harry Truman's order to integrate the
181 military;
182(32)   The Voting Rights Act, Public Accommodations Act,
183 Fair Housing Act, Hate Crimes Act, and Equal Employment
184 Opportunity Act;
185(33)   The following Supreme Court cases: Dred Scott v.
186 Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education of
187 Topeka, Shelley v. Kraemer, and Missouri ex rel. Gaines v.
188 Canada;
189(34)   Significant African Americans in history;
190(35)   President Dwight Eisenhower's order for American
191 troops to protect black students integrating public schools;
192(36)   The civil rights movement;
193(37)   The counter intelligence program, "COINTELPRO",
194 the Federal Bureau of Investigation's conspiracy against
195 black civil rights leaders and groups;
196(38)   The freedom riders;
197(39)   The lynching of over four thousand black people
198 in America between 1877 and 1950;
199(40)   The Black Lives Matter movement, and the police
200 murders of unarmed black people;
201(41)   The Tuskegee experiment on black men by failing
202 to treat black men with syphilis to determine the effects of
203 untreated syphilis upon human beings;
204(42)   Painful and crippling gynecological experiments
205 on black women;
206(43)   Historically black colleges and universities; and
207(44)   Such other African American history as shall
208 fully detail and tell the history or story of Africans in
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209 Africa, both before and after the European military invasion
210 and colonization of Africa and the enslavement of Africans,
211 including the European invaders and colonizers' violent
212 dispossession of Africans from their homelands, and of gold,
213 diamonds, and other minerals and natural resources; the
214 Europeans' deprivation of Africans of their human rights
215 both in the United States and in Africa; the African lives
216 and bodies lost as a result of the European invasion and
217 colonization of the Americas and Africa; and African
218 Americans' history in the United States.
2197.    (1) The department of elementary and secondary
220 education shall develop a curriculum framework of
221 instruction for studying black history based on the
222 instructional topics specified in subsection 6 of this
223 section.       The department shall make such curriculum
224 framework available to up to twenty-five school districts or
225 schools within a school district, with at least one school
226 district or school located within each of the nine regional
227 professional development centers recognized by the
228 department, as part of a pilot program beginning in the 2027-
229 2028 school year.
230(2)   Each school district or school participating in
231 the pilot program shall adopt the curriculum framework
232 provided by the department under subdivision (1) of this
233 subsection in the 2027-2028 school year.       Each school
234 district or school shall determine the minimum amount of
235 instruction time that qualifies as a unit of instruction
236 satisfying the requirements of this subsection.
237(3)   Each participating school district or school shall
238 provide a plan of professional development for teachers to
239 ensure such teachers are adequately prepared to provide the
240 instruction required under this subsection.
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241(4)   The department of elementary and secondary
242 education shall provide for a program evaluation regarding
243 the success and impact of the pilot program upon completion
244 of the first year of the pilot program.       The department
245 shall report the results of such evaluation to the general
246 assembly.
247(5)   The department shall make the curriculum framework
248 available to all school districts beginning in the 2028-2029
249 school year.       All school districts shall participate in
250 black history week by the 2029-2030 school year.
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