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Oklahoma boy praised for heroism twice in one day

Sixth-grader Davyon Johnson was honored in his hometown for saving the lives of two people

MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) — An Oklahoma sixth-grader was honored by law enforcement and school officials for his heroic actions not just once, but twice in the same day.

Earlier this month, Davyon Johnson used the Heimlich maneuver on a classmate who was choking on a bottle cap at his school in Muskogee. Later that same day, he helped a woman escape from a burning house, the Muskogee Phoenix reported.

Last week, Davyon was named an honorary member of the police and sheriff’s departments at the Muskogee Board of Education meeting, the newspaper reported.

“I felt good, excited,” Davyon said about the honor.

Principal Latricia Dawkins called Davyon a “dual hero” and said the recognition couldn’t have happened to a better person.

“He is just a kind soul and well-liked by his peers and staff alike,” she said.

Dawkins recalled the incident that earned Davyon the honor. She said a student was trying to fill his water bottle and loosen the cap with his mouth. The cap slipped into his throat, she said.

Davyon Johnson honored by Okahoma police (Facebook)

The choking student stumbled into a nearby classroom, where Davyon happened to be, she said.

“Davyon immediately sprinted over and did the Heimlich maneuver,” Dawkins said. “From the account of the witnesses, when he did it the bottle cap popped out.”

Davyon demonstrated how he got behind the choking student, wrapped his arms around the student and “burped him, kind of.”

Davyon helped a woman evacuate her burning house later that day.

“It was a disabled lady and she was walking out of her house,” Davyon said. “She was on her porch. But I thought, being a good citizen, I would cross and help her get into her truck and leave.”

He said the back of the house was on fire, “but it eventually got to the front of the house.”

Davyon said he learned to do the Heimlich maneuver on YouTube and said it is a valuable procedure to learn.

“Just in case you’re in the situation I was in, you can know what to do,” he said.

Davyon’s mother, LaToya Johnson, said she’s not surprised he behaved the way he did. She said her brother, Wendell Johnson, is an emergency medical technician.

“I’m just a proud mom,” she said.

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Oklahoma hit with ACLU lawsuit challenging its ban of critical race theory

The suit targeting HB 1775 was filed in federal court against the Oklahoma State Board of Education, its Regents for Higher Education, Gov. Stitt and others.

The state of Oklahoma has been hit with a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union in a challenge to its ban of critical race theory being taught in public schools.

HB 1775, a bill authored by Republican state Rep. Kevin West, was approved in April, prohibiting educators from teaching topics like white privilege or the history of white supremacy. Further, the bill makes gender, harassment and diversity training optional for students and staff — all of which were previously mandatory.

Republican Oklahoma state Rep. Kevin West (above), who authored HB 1775, which bans critical race theory from schools, said the ACLU lawsuit is “full of half-truths” and “blatant lies.” (Photo: Sue Ogrocki/AP)

The ACLU is also joined in its lawsuit by several students, educators, the Oklahoma University American Association of University Professors, American Indian Movement-Indian Territory, the Oklahoma NAACP and the Black Emergency Response Team, a group of activist student-teachers from Oklahoma University.

The groups argue that the bill creates an environment where students and teachers are subjected to “heightened levels of racial and gender hostility and harassment.” Further, they claim it infringes on their ability to learn their own history.

BREAKING: We just filed a lawsuit challenging Oklahoma classroom censorship bill, HB 1775, together with a group of students and educators.This bill restricts public school teachers and students from learning and talking about race and gender in the classroom.

— ACLU (@ACLU) October 19, 2021

Amen! ???????????????????????? https://t.co/gIDZQAVtrf

— Kim (@Chaplain__Kim) October 19, 2021

Per CBS News, the lawsuit reads, “The Act’s vague, overbroad, and viewpoint discriminatory provisions leave Oklahoma educators with an impossible-and unconstitutional-choice: avoid topics related to race or sex in-class materials and discussions or risk losing their teaching licenses for violating the law.”

In a statement from the ACLU, Emerson Sykes, an attorney with its Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said, “All young people deserve to learn an inclusive and accurate history in schools, free from censorship or discrimination.”

“HB 1775 is so poorly drafted — in places it is literally indecipherable — that districts and teachers have no way of knowing what concepts and ideas are prohibited,” said Sykes. “The bill was intended to inflame a political reaction, not further a legitimate educational interest. These infirmities in the law are all the more troubling because the bill applies to public colleges and universities, where the First Amendment is especially protective of academic freedom.”

According to Genevieve Bonadies Torres, associate director of the Educational Opportunities Project with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “The law directly violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s command that governmental actors do not engage in racial discrimination. Every student in Oklahoma deserves an equitable education that reflects the rich diversity of the state and provides a full, fact-based discussion of the state’s checkered history of racism, sexism, discrimination.”

West told CNN the ACLU lawsuit is “full of half-truths, and in some cases blatant lies.”

“It is unfortunate, but not surprising, to see radical leftist organizations supporting the racist indoctrination of our children that HB 1775 was written to stop,” he said in a statement. “The law ensures that all history is taught in schools without shaming the children of today into blaming themselves for problems of the past, as radical leftists would prefer.”

The ACLU notes that the law has had an immediate impact on the school curriculum and the efficacy of teachers. Books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Raisin in the Sun have been removed from Oklahoma classrooms, and teachers are forbidden from using the word “diversity” or “white privilege.”

The suit was filed in Oklahoma City federal court against the Oklahoma State Board of Education, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, Governor Kevin Stitt, Attorney General John O’Connor, state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, and the superintendent and school board of Edmond Public Schools.

One lawsuit plaintiff, Regan Killacky, who teaches English at Edmond Memorial High School, contends “HB 1775 limits my ability to teach an inclusive and complete history within the walls of my classroom, ultimately restricting the exact type of learning environment all young people deserve — one free from censorship or discrimination.”

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100 years after Tulsa Massacre, fight remains for insurance companies to pay up

Exclusive: President Biden is journeying to Tulsa, where Black families were denied financial restitution from insurance companies after the 1921 massacre.

A century later, the issue is still not settled on the massacre of the wealthy Black Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

One hundred years ago, Black families in Tulsa were denied financial restitution from insurance companies after the massacre that occurred between May 31 and June 1, 1921. Ironically, some of the same insurers that denied those claims are still economically thriving today from that decision.

In this photo provided by the Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, a group of Black men are marched past the corner of 2nd and Main Streets in Tulsa, Okla., under armed guard during the Tulsa Race Massacre on June 1, 1921. (Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa via AP, File)

“We know what was taken,” said Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lead attorney for the last living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre. “We also know some of the insurance companies that are still active today.”

Read More: Tulsa Race Massacre survivors deliver emotional pleas to Congress at hearing

Solomon-Simmons announced during a hearing before Congress that he wants to open a dialogue with “CNA, AIG companies, the Insurance Company of Pennsylvania, Westchester Fire Insurance Company, the Hartford, Great American Insurance Company, Insurance Company of North America, North River Insurance Company, California Insurance Company, Phoenix Insurance Company.”  

NAACP President Derrick Johnson contends this is an example of how Corporate America participates in structural racism. 

“It is not only the government of policies, it is not only the behaviors of individuals, it’s the ongoing collusion of Corporate America who profited off of the [backs] of African Americans,” Johnson tells theGrio. “It wasn’t just a function of a region of the country in the South or local governments or the federal government. It was the ongoing participation of all society.”

In the midst of a new push for racial equity, 100 years after the displacement of 10,000 people and destruction of 35 blocks of the affluent Black enclave, President Joe Biden will travel to Greenwood on Tuesday. According to Biden Senior Advisor, Cedric Richmond, the administration is “recognizing the moment and we hope to meet the moment.”  

Cedric RichmondCedric Richmond speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill on February 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Richmond, who also heads the White House Office of Public Engagement, said the president will connect his “racial equity agenda” and the “economy” to the visit. 

President Biden plans to meet with the remaining three living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre who are now centenarians. The survivors were children at the time of the massacre. Another portion of the president’s trip to the historic area is to visit the Greenwood Cultural Center. 

President Biden is expected to tell the story of the town and then of its downfall. Richmond underscored “it is a story in this country most people don’t know.”

As the story goes, a Black man and white woman were in an integrated elevator in a building. The white woman screamed for no apparent reason except for fear of a Black man. The scream began a chain of events that ended in death and the destruction of a town that was both the hope and dream of the slave of yesterday and the people of today. 

The state of Oklahoma created a commission on how to move forward with what happened in the Greenwood district. Action, however, has yet to be taken.

Now Congress is stepping in. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee held a hearing on the matter where Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson stepped up by proposing to take on another legacy piece of legislation initially introduced by former Congressman John Conyers Jr.

Read More: 3 books on the Tulsa Race Massacre you should pay attention to 100 years after the attack

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Congressman Johnson has proposed the Tulsa Greenwood Race Massacre Accountability Act. He said it ”will bring some measure of accountability, and perhaps even compensation for the losses that those victims and their heirs suffered as a result of this state-sanctioned violence.”

The legislation seeks to redress the denied insurance claims and lost funds that banks held after the massacre. 

Johnson contends “the complicity of the state and the city in finding that it was a race riot” was a maneuver to block the survivors from recompense.

“All of those cases were dismissed and so the people never did get their just compensation in the courts of law,” Johnson tells theGrio.

Johnson is working on finding someone in the Senate to create a compassion bill to his measure in the House. 

Congresswoman Jackson Lee, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, said the conversations about repairing what happened in Tulsa are underway.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee thegrio.comRep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“We’re talking also about reparations right now when it comes to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the 100th anniversary of the massacre there, Black Wall Street, the destruction of a viable, economically viable, self-sustaining Black community that was broken up because of racism,” the Texas Congresswoman tells theGrio. 

Congresswoman Jackson Lee also highlighted that reparations is an international term and for that reason, Congress is working with organizations that focus on the international human rights aspect of the Tulsa Race Massacre, such as the Human Rights Watch. 

theGrio spoke exclusively to Congressman Gregory Meeks, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who also contends many of these race issues are human rights issues.

Chairman Rep. Gregory W. MeeksChairman Rep. Gregory W. Meeks speaks as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the House Committee On Foreign Affairs March 10, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Photo by Ting Shen-Pool/Getty Images)

As a representative of the United States on the international stage, he makes it a point to talk with other countries about their human rights problems and account his own experiences as a Black man in the United States. 

”I say to them before they even have a chance, I’m not coming here to tell you that America is superior to you. I’m telling you that we are trying to fix our problems in America still to this day,” Meeks explained.

“And the right thing for you to do is when you to start doing the same thing, and I can’t sit back knowing the injustices that I have suffered … [and] allow that to continue someplace else …. and not speaking up about it.”

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