Top Oklahoma Educator And Holocaust Denier Are Kissing Cousins

Educator Denies Tulsa Race Riots Were Racist

Ryan Walters and David Irving would get along just fine.
Walters, Oklahoma’s far right, superintendent of public instruction, claims that the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was not about race while Irving, a British author and notorious Holocaust denier, insists the Holocaust was a “myth” focused on the “gas chambers fairy tale.”
For his abhorrent comments, Irving was sentenced in 2006 in Austria to three years in prison for the crime of denying the existence of the Auschwitz gas chambers and for “trivializing, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust.”
For his remarks, the 38-year-old Walters was applauded by many, for carrying out a policy of modern day Holocaust denial, cloaked in a preposterous argument against blaming racially-motivated incidents on racism. Walters drew praise and support from equally far right, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, among others, for his ongoing attempts to whitewash history and absolve whites of guilt for racially-motivated incidents.
Contrary to the historical revisionism of Walters and others, the Tulsa race massacre was unequivocally about race. On May 21, 1921, mobs of armed white vigilantes razed the Greenwood District in Tulsa, a thriving Black neighborhood known as Black Wall Street.
White mobs killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned around 1,600 homes and businesses along Black Wall Street. The attackers, some of whom had been deputized and armed by city officials, murdered Black residents and destroyed homes and businesses over the course of two days. The massacre is considered one of the worst incidents of racially motivated violence in U.S. history.
Since 2002, Oklahoma schools have been required by law to teach about the massacre and its racist causes.
Critical race theory is a set of studies that documents how racism stems from enslavement and how it continues to impact society in many ways. Oklahoma’s Republican administration is one of many red states that have banned the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Walters said that he wants Oklahoma students to learn about the Tulsa race massacre but that teachers may not say the white supremacist attack was about race.
Walters took office in January, and previously was the state’s secretary of education. Last month, he called for schools to promote Christianity in the classroom by displaying the Ten Commandments and “Western heritage,” common coded language for white supremacist ideology.
“I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of the color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist,” Walters said at a public forum last Thursday. “That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals. Oh, you can. Absolutely, historically, you should. ‘This was right. This was wrong. They did this for this reason.’ But to say it was inherent in that because of their skin is where I say that is critical race theory. You’re saying that race defines a person.”

Walters refused to state the obvious, that in fact in 1921 Oklahoma and many years before and since, race defines many of its citizens.
Walters has only a bachelor of arts degree from Harding University, not exactly impressive credentials for a state schools chief. Background about the university helps to explain the philosophy of Walters and other Oklahoma racist educators and officials.
Harding University was established in 1924 in Searcy, Ark. It is the state’s largest private university and was previously known as Harper College, Arkansas Christian College and Harding College. Affiliated with the Churches of Christ, the university has an enrollment of 4,879 students. Churches of Christ believe the Bible is the only source to find doctrine and that the Bible is historically accurate and literal.
The school remained racially segregated for most of the tenure of George S. Benson, who was named the school’s president in 1937 and remained is leader for three decades. Benson defended Harding’s delay in integrating and said that he believed African Americans were inferior because they fell under the “Curse of Ham.”
The Book of Genesis says the curse of Ham was imposed upon Ham’s son Canaan by the patriarch Noah. It occurs in the context of Noah’s drunkenness and it is provoked by a shameful act which was perpetrated by Noah’s son Ham, who “saw the nakedness of his father.”
The story has been interpreted by some Christians, Muslims and Jews as an explanation for black skin, as well as a justification for slavery of black people. Some in the Latter Day Saint movement used the curse of Ham to prevent the ordination of black men to its priesthood.
In 1957, more than75 percent of the students, faculty, and staff signed a statement that the university was ready to integrate. In response, Benson discussed what he called, “Harding College and the Colored Problem,” and said the idea of integration was youthful idealism, and that students should defer to the judgment of older people with more experience.
Benson also said that Black people were far better off in the U.S. than in other countries, and that integration would result in destruction of property, the spread of venereal diseases, and increased pregnancies. Benson also maintained that mixing of the races was against the divine order. In 1953, Norman Adamson became the first black person accepted to Harding but he was denied admission after administrators learned he was black.
By 1969, Harding University had 20 black students out of a student body of more than 2,000. University President Clifton L. Ganus Jr. discouraged interracial relationships. In 1969, three black students who protested racism at the university were expelled. That year, Ganus attempted to placate students by promising to hire “Negro” teachers, but it never did.
Under its code of behavior, students are expected to maintain the highest standards of Christian morality, integrity, orderliness and personal honor. The university can refuse admittance or dismiss any student whose lifestyle is not consistent with the Christian principles that Harding represents.
The school requires each student enrolled in nine or more hours to regularly attend one Bible class that meets at least three hours a week each semester. Attendance is mandatory, and nonattendance may result in suspension from the university.
Students cannot visit inappropriate places of entertainment such as dance clubs or bars and are not allowed to participate in suggestive or social dancing. Harding explicitly regulates sexual relationships among students and staff and prohibits premarital, extramarital, and homosexual sex.
“Harding University holds to the biblical principle that God instituted marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman and that gender identity is given by God and revealed in one’s birth sex,” notes the university’s student handbook. “ Sexual immorality in any form will result in suspension from the University.”
In 2017, the university was granted an exception to Title IX, which allows for legal discrimination against LGBTQ+ students on religious grounds. Campus Pride has listed the school as among the “Absolute Worst Campuses for LGBTQ Youth” in the U.S. Campus Pride is a national nonprofit organization for student leaders and campus groups working to create a safer college environment for LGBT students.
In 2020, a petition drive was created to rename the Benson auditorium because of Benson’s racist views. The petition asked that the auditorium be re-named Botham Jean Auditorium, after a Black alumnus who was murdered the night of Sept. 6, 2018, in his own apartment by a white Dallas police officer who alleged she had confused their apartments and mistaken the 26-year-old for a burglar. The university retained the name of the Benson auditorium.
Walters was appointed as Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education in September 2020 by then-Gov. Mary Fallin. Fallin was a strong trump supporter and had been considered a potential 2020 trump running mate.
In 2022, Walker ran for Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction and was elected, with endorsements by Stitt and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. As superintendent, Walters is paid $124,373 annually and another $40,000 a year as a Cabinet secretary.
During his campaign, Walters promulgated the litter boxes in schools hoax which alleged that certain North American schools provide litter boxes in bathrooms for students who “identify as cats.” Various American conservative and far-right politicians and media personalities promoted the hoax in response to several school districts enacting protections for transgender students.
One of Walters’ first acts as state superintendent was to instruct the Oklahoma Department of Education to revoke the teaching licenses of Tyler Wrynn and Summer Boismier, two Oklahoma teachers who had been critical of HB-1775, a law that limits teaching concepts around race and gender.
Wrynn, a middle school English teacher, came under fire after a national conservative group released a video in which Wrynn described himself as an anarchist and said there are ways to subtly introduce into the classroom race and gender concepts banned by House Bill 1775. The school district said the video was heavily edited and was obtained under fraudulent pretenses.
Boismier, a former Norman High School English teacher, resigned after she covered up the titles of some books in her classroom because they might have violated House Bill 1775, a law that bans educators from teaching certain concepts on race and sex. After covering the titles with a sign that said, “Books the state doesn’t want you to read,” Boismier shared a QR code for the Brooklyn Public Library, which has a digital collection of banned books.
A TikTok segment by Wrynn, expressing his support for the LGBTQ community, has been viewed more than 200,000 times. In response, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jackson Lahmeyer called Tyler Wrynn a “predator,” in a social media post.
“I have instructed my staff to immediately begin the process to hold the two teachers accountable who actively violated state law, admitted to violating state law, to indoctrinate our kids,” Walters said. “We will not allow the indoctrination of Oklahoma students here in the state of Oklahoma.”
This past June, Walters spoke at the far right, “Moms for Liberty” national summit in Philadelphia where he advocated eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and criticized teachers unions. Moms for Liberty is designated an anti-government extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Stitt signed a bill on May 7, 2021, prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory or its gender equivalent in public schools. Opponents of the bill said it was intended to whitewash the U.S. history on race.
In November, Stitt issued an executive order that prohibited transgender individuals from changing the gender on their birth certificates. In 2022, Stitt signed a bill into law that prohibited nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates.
“People are created by God to be male or female. There is no such thing as nonbinary sex,” said Stitt, contradicting a wealth of expert knowledge about the nature of transgender individuals.
In May 2023, Stitt vetoed funding for Oklahoma’s PBS network OETA, accusing it of broadcasting pro-LGBT content that “indoctrinates” children.
Stitt’s predecessor, Gov. Fallin, supported a controversial Ten Commandments monument that had been erected on the Oklahoma State Capitol grounds in 2012. In July 2015, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled, in a 7–2 vote, that the monument’s presence on public land violated the Oklahoma Constitution, which prohibits the use of public property “for the benefit of any religious purpose.”
Fallin was criticized for bias after ordering state-owned National Guard facilities to deny spousal benefits (including the provision of identification cards that would allow them to access such benefits) to all same-sex couples.
In 2018, Fallin signed legislation that would allow private adoption agencies to refuse to place children in homes if it “would violate the agency’s written religious or moral convictions or policies.”
Fallin was part of a group of Republican governors who have said that they will refuse to comply with Environmental Protection Agency regulations to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change.