Oklahoma City

“I came from a family of believers. We believed in the sun when it didn’t shine. We believed in the rain when it wasn’t raining. My parents taught me to believe in a God I couldn’t see.”
—  Clara Luper, educator and activist

Driven by her passion for youth advocacy, Clara Luper, a public school teacher, served as the sponsor for the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council. Under her leadership, the young people met regularly at a renovated gas station they named, the Freedom Center. The small space became the hub for civil rights activity where Mrs. Luper led the group in planning lunch counter sit-ins, the first of their kind in the United States, which were instrumental in breaking discriminatory barriers in public accommodations. She led by example, demonstrating her personal commitment by going to jail 26 times for peaceful protests. The non-violent philosophy and demonstration tactics taught by Mrs. Luper became replicable models later leveraged in civil rights protests throughout the United States.