"Clara Shepard Luper"(May 3,1923-June 8,2011)

Was a civil rights leader,retired school teacher,and a pioneering leader in the American Civil

Rights Movement.Clara 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 nonviolent sit-in protest of downtown drugstore lunch-counters which overturned their policies for segregation.She continued desegregating hundreds of establishments in Oklahoma,and was active on the national level during the 1960s movement.She was born in rural Okfuskee County,Oklahoma.Her father,Ezell Shepard,was a World War I veteran and laborer.Her mother,Isabell Shepard,worked as laundress.Clara was raised in Hoffman Oklahoma.She went to high school in the all-black of Grayson Oklahoma,and attended college at Langston University where, in 1944,she received a B.A. in mathematics with a minor in history.In 1950,Clara was one of the group of black students who integrated the University of Oklahoma.She received an M.A. in History Education from the university in 1951.In 1957, as Clara worked as a history teacher Dunjess High School east of Oklahoma City,she became the advisor for the city Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council.At this time she was deeply influenced by the success of Martin Luther King,Jr,and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.With the Youth Council she wrote and staged a play entitled Brother President about King's philosophy of nonviolence.In 1958,she was invited to bring the Oklahoma City Youth Council to perform Brother President for the NAACP in New York City.The trip to and from New York was a formative experience for Youth Council members.On their return to Oklahoma the Youth Council voted to initiate a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to end segregation in Oklahoma City.From 1958 to 1964 Clara mentored the members of the NAACP Youth Council during its campaign to end the segregation of public accommodations through sit-ins,protests,and boycotts.On Tuesday afternoon,August 19,1958 she and a group of Youth Council members entered the segregated Katz drugstore in downtown Oklahoma City.They took seats,and asked to be served.Two days later,Katz corporate management in Kansas City desegregated counter in three states.This successful sit-in led by Clara,her eight-year old daughter who suggested the action,and the rest of the children in the NAACP Youth Council,at the Katz Drug Store occurred a year and a half before the February 1,1960 Greensboro,North Carolina sit-ins.From 1958 to 1964 Clara was a major leader of the fight to end segregation in Oklahoma.She led the campaigns to gain equal banking rights,employment,opportunities,open housing,and voting rights.Along with the NAACP Youth Council,she personally integrated hundreds of restaurants,cafes,theaters,hotels,and churches,including such notable Oklahoma City establishments as the Spilt-T drive-in and the Skirvin Hotel.She served on Governor J Howard Edmondson's Committee on Human Relations.Clara was a prominent figure in the national civil rights movement.She was active in the NAACP and attended the association's annual conference every year with the Oklahoma City Youth Council.She took part in the 1963 March on Washington where Dr.King gave his "I have a Dream"speech.Clara 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 marches were attacked by state and local police with tear gas and billy clubs.After 1964 Clara remained an important community figure as an activist,educator, and stalwart NAACP supporter.In these years she expanded the range of her concerns to include advocacy for educational,economic,and political equality.In 1968,she was one of of a handful of African-American teachers hired to to teach at Oklahoma City's Northwest Classen High School as part of the highly  controversial court ordered school plan implemented that year.She was later reassigned to John Marshall High School(Oklahoma) where she continued to teach history and media studies.In August 1969,Clara was the spokesperson for striking sanitation workers in Oklahoma City.The sanitation workers sought a shorter work week,pay raises,and new grievance procedures.The Oklahoma City sanitation strike began on August 19 and ended on November 7,1969.In 1972 she ran unsuccessfully 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 live long enough to know that people are people."