The dedication ceremony for Clara Luper National Sit-In Plaza Saturday included several of Luper’s students who she recruited to participate in the sit-in, Mayor David Holt, and local leaders who spearheaded the project.
But the crowd seemed to most anticipate comments from Clara Luper’s daughter, and one of the original sit-inners, Marilyn Luper Hildreth, who talked about her mother’s legacy, and the Clara Luper she knew.
“I often think about my mother,” she told the crowd. “And my mother was a tough cookie. In her house, if you couldn’t spell it, you couldn’t eat it.”
She expressed her gratitude for the monument, and implored those in attendance to vote, teach their kids to vote, and preserve democracy — and reminisced about the bravery it took for those young Black kids all those years ago to stand against segregation and oppression.
“Oh, you went to jail a couple of times, but that’s OK,” she said. “You got spit on. You wiped it off. You got slapped. You turned the other cheek. You got kicked, and didn’t complain.”
The plaza is located on the original site of Katz Drug Store in downtown OKC, and features a 4-ton bronze reproduction of the lunch counter and life-sized statues of Clara Luper and her students — and an empty seat for visitors, so they can interact with the art.
The sit-in movement is generally believed to have originated in Greensboro, North Carolina, but the organizers and speakers at the dedication took issue with that, saying the Oklahoma City sit-in movement started two years earlier, and students from Greensboro got the idea from Oklahoma City sit-inners at the NAACP Youth Council in 1959.
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt told the crowd at the dedication about how the project came to fruition.
“In August of 2018, I asked councilman and pastor Dr. Lee Cooper, Jr., and businessman and former Secretary of State John Kennedy to co-chair an effort to tell this story right here in the heart of our city,” Holt said. “We had absolutely nothing here, and so, honestly, I just hoped we could get a really nice plaque. Lee and John had a different vision. They and their committee and their donors… said ‘no,’ we want something that truly meets this moment.”
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