Mississippi schools adopt civil rights curriculum

This may be old news for some of you, but I just stumbled across this story the other day:

JACKSON, Miss. - Mississippi, where violence in the 1960s came to epitomize the struggle for racial equality, could become a pioneer in offering civil rights history lessons from kindergarten through high school.

Gov. Haley Barbour announced Monday [March 20, 2006] he had signed a bill that authorizes the state's public school districts to make civil rights and human rights a part of the curriculum in all grades.

Under the bill, which becomes law July 1, a commission would be appointed to help districts develop the curriculum and find resources to offset the costs. Implementation would be left to individual school districts.

Susan Glisson, executive director of the Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, spearheaded the bill.

The article says that one of the goals is to teach more about "contributions made by grass-roots people, some of whose names we may never know."

I have nothing to add, except to say this sounds like a Good Thing.