State Senate in Okla. votes to end link with Jim Crow laws

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 7, 2008

The state Senate on Tuesday adopted by voice vote a resolution calling for the repudiation of all concepts and ideas behind the Jim Crow laws passed by the original Oklahoma Legislature.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 49 was adopted to provide a barrier between today's Legislature and the attitudes in Senate Bill 1 of Oklahoma's first Legislature in 1908. The bill required separate facilities for blacks in public transportation, public education, as well as other areas.

The resolution's author, state Sen. Earl Garrison, D-Muskogee, spoke of how times had changed since then. The measure declares the laws "abhorrent and repugnant to today's chambers."

The resolution also calls for the state Legislature to begin its second century "free from any and all racial bias or prejudice" and declares the intent to maintain this attitude for the future.