Clara Luper | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Clara Mae Shepard May 3, 1923 |
| Died | June 8, 2011 (aged 88) Oklahoma City, Oklahoma |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Civic leader, school teacher, activist, 1972 Oklahoma candidate for U.S. Senate |
| Children | 2 |
Clara Shepard Luper (born Clara Mae Shepard May 3, 1923 – June 8, 2011)[1] was a civic leader, schoolteacher, and pioneering leader in the American Civil Rights Movement.[2] She is best known for her leadership role in the 1958 Oklahoma City sit-in movement, as she, her young son and daughter, and numerous young members of the NAACP Youth Council successfully conducted carefully planned nonviolent sit-in protests of downtown drugstore lunch-counters, which overturned their policies of segregation. The success of this sit-in would result in Luper becoming a leader of various sit-ins throughout Oklahoma City between 1958 and 1964.[3] The Clara Luper Corridor is a streetscape and civic beautification project from the Oklahoma Capitol area east to northeast Oklahoma City. In 1972, Clara Luper was an Oklahoma candidate for election to the United States Senate. When asked by the press if she, a black woman, could represent white people, she responded: “Of course, I can represent white people, black people, red people, yellow people, brown people, and polka dot people. You see, I have lived long enough to know that people are people.”
Luper continued desegregating hundreds of establishments in Oklahoma and was active on the national level during the 1960s movements.
In a 2003 interview about the challenges she faced, she stated: "My biggest challenge, I think, was within myself – to believe that I could continue in spite of conditions. My biggest challenge that I could continue without knowing where our next dollar was coming from. And the main challenge and the main satisfaction was knowing that someday we’d be able to do what my father, who was a veteran in World War I, was not able to do, and that was to enjoy the privileges of first class citizenship."[4]
- ^ "Oklahoma Activist Dies". cnn.com. June 9, 2011.
- ^ Clara Luper Changed Oklahoma Policy's, African American Registry.
- ^ Smith-Estrada, Carmen (December 9, 2011). "Oklahoma City African Americans sit-in for integration, 1958-64". Swarthmore College. Retrieved April 27, 2023.
- ^ "Luper, Clara".
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