Clara Shepard Luper (pronounced LOOP-er) was a school teacher in Oklahoma who became an important leader in the Civil Rights Movement, helping to win equal treatment for black people.Clara Mae Shepard was born in 1923 in a small county in Oklahoma called Okfuskee.Growing up, she attended schools that had only black students, because in those days, Oklahoma had separate schools for black people and white people.She became a school teacher, married a man named Burt Luper, and had three children: a boy and two girls.Back then, not only did Oklahoma have separate schools for white and black children, it had separate restaurants, too.Some stores had lunch counters. A lunch counter is a long counter with stools for customers on one side. People who served the food were on the other side. You could sit on a stool and order a sandwich or soft drink and a person would bring it to you. In Oklahoma at that time, stores refused to let black people use the lunch counters.Clara said that one of her young daughters made a comment that gave her an idea. An idea of a way to change this unfair practice.Clara, three other adults, and 14 students that were part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council took action.On the morning of August 19, 1958, the group went to Katz Drug Store in downtown Oklahoma City and sat on all the stools at the lunch counter. They ordered Cokes.The store refused to serve them, but the adults and students didn’t leave. They didn’t argue or act angry, they simply continued to sit on the stools. Because they were taking up all the seats, white customers couldn’t sit and order. The group stayed there all day until closing time. This type of action is called a sit-in.Because Clara Luper was a school teacher, she didn’t let the children sit and do nothing. Each one had brought their school books and did their homework as they sat there. Also, she had made sure each student was neatly dressed, wearing clean clothes that were ironed.If people yelled at or spoke mean things to the students, they didn’t answer back. They just continued to quietly sit.The next day the group returned and did the same thing. And again the following day. After several days of this, the owners of the store agreed to let all people eat at the lunch counter.Eventually, not just that one Katz Drug Store, but 38 other Katz stores in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa let all people, regardless of skin color, eat at their lunch counters.The word that is used to describe this is integrate. The stores integrated their lunch counters.The sit-ins that Clara Luper organized eventually led to the integration of all the eating places in Oklahoma City.This is just one of many important contributions she made to equality in Oklahoma and our nation.Clara Luper died on June 8, 2011 at age 88.————-Fun Facts• As a school teacher, Clara Luper taught American history for 41 years.• She wrote a play entitled “Brother President” about Dr. Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence.• Clara Luper is often referred to as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.• When she ran for the U.S. Senate, someone asked if she could represent white people. She said, “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.”
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