Clara Luper Plaza dedication honors Oklahoma’s role in civil rights history (Capitol Update)

Occasionally, something happens that makes you especially proud of your state. One of those moments occurred Saturday, November 1, when the Clara Luper National Sit-In Plaza in downtown Oklahoma City was dedicated to honor Ms. Clara Luper and the original 13 students who staged the nation’s first sit-in at Katz Drug Store in downtown Oklahoma City, beginning August 19, 1958. They took seats at the counter and asked for Coca-Colas. Denied service, they refused to leave until closing time and returned on Saturday mornings for several weeks.

According to Ms. Luper’s obituary in the New York Times in 2011, eventually the Katz chain agreed to integrate lunch counters at its 38 stores in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa. During the following six years, nearly all restaurants in Oklahoma City were desegregated because of sit-ins organized by the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter.

Ms. Luper was a history teacher at Dunjee High School in Spencer in 1957 when she agreed to become adviser to the Oklahoma City NAACP’s youth council. She had written a play titled “Brother President” about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his non-violent techniques used to eliminate segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. Herbert Wright, the National Youth Director of the NAACP saw the play and invited Ms. Luper and the main cast of the play to New York City to perform for the “Salute to Young Freedom Fighters” rally.

While in New York, Luper’s students experienced eating in desegregated restaurants for the first time. When they returned home, they were offended by the segregated restaurants in Oklahoma City and devised the plan to peacefully sit at a segregated lunch counter until they were served.

Ms. Luper’s activism extended beyond the sit-ins. A week after that first protest, 17 white churches in Oklahoma City let members of her youth group attend services. At another church, a pastor asked two youngsters to leave, The Associated Press reported at the time. “God did not intend Negroes and whites to worship together,” he told them.

According to Wikipedia, Ms. Luper took part in the 1963 March on Washington where Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. She also took part in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches where she received a deep cut in her leg on “Bloody Sunday” when 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police with tear gas and Billy clubs.

The plaza is located on the original site of Katz Drug Store in downtown OKC and features a 4-ton bronze reproduction of the lunch counter and life-sized statues of Clara Luper and her students. It includes an empty seat for visitors, so they can interact with the art.

At the dedication Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt told the crowd, “In August of 2018, I asked councilman and pastor Dr. Lee Cooper, Jr., and businessman and former Secretary of State John Kennedy to co-chair an effort to tell this story right here in the heart of our city. We had absolutely nothing here, and so, honestly, I just hoped we could get a really nice plaque. Lee and John had a different vision. They and their committee and their donors… said ‘no,’ we want something that truly meets this moment.”

Clara Luper and her students were less recognized than those at Greensboro’s Woolworth’s sit-in in 1960, likely due to North Carolina’s greater national prominence, yet Luper was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement.

I met Ms. Luper several times in 1990 when she campaigned for me in my unsuccessful run for governor. I think she was a bit chagrined. I didn’t know more about her place in the civil rights movement. I was in high school and college at the time and should have been more aware. It was a privilege to have known Ms. Luper, and it’s inspiring to see her – and her students – receive the recognition they richly deserve. Thanks to the Oklahoma City political and business leadership for making it happen.