The Florida Department of Education’s standards review committee voted Wednesday to remove the 1921 Tulsa race massacre from its approved 11th-grade U.S. history materials, replacing the unit with a single-page worksheet titled “Tulsa: A Fine Town, Geographically Speaking.” The new worksheet contains seven fill-in-the-blank questions about Oklahoma’s annual rainfall and a word search containing the words OIL, PLAINS, and SKY.

Committee chair State Sen. Brad Eckhardt-Maus, 51, defended the change as a return to “the basics,” noting that students “already know what a massacre is, generally” and that dwelling on specifics “doesn’t really serve anybody.” The original 14-page unit, which detailed the destruction of the Greenwood District and the deaths of as many as 300 Black residents, was described by Eckhardt-Maus as “well-written, I’ll give it that, but a tough read.” A retired history teacher reached at her home in St. Petersburg said only, “I taught for thirty-one years. Thirty-one. I don’t have anything else to say. Please go.” She then closed the door and could be heard from the porch turning a deadbolt twice.