Skip to main content

Freedom City Oklahoma

OKC Katz Drug Store sit-in, Clara Luper to be honored with monument

June 25, 2026

The design for a downtown Oklahoma City monument depicting the 13 Black children who participated in the first Katz Drug Store sit-in led by Clara Luper was announced Wednesday.

The $3.6 million bronze monument — with sculptures featuring the Katz lunch counter, the 13 children and the waitress who refused to serve them — will be part of the Clara Luper Sit-In Plaza at Robinson and Main, where the drug store once stood. Planning of the monument began in 2018, when Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt tasked a committee with commemorating the historic sit-in that led to desegregation in local businesses.