How a history teacher and 13 Black students shaped the civil rights movement
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Today, Oklahoma City celebrates a moment in the city's past, a moment in 1958 in the midst of the civil rights movement. Thirteen Black students sat down at a segregated counter.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
That moment of change is recent enough that many who lived through it are still with us. One is Marilyn Luper.
MARILYN LUPER: And you have to understand that Oklahoma had some of the most segregated laws in the United States on their books.
INSKEEP: She was just 11 years old when she helped to organize the protest following the lead of a high school history teacher - and not just any high school history teacher.
LUPER: Her greatest claim of fame is that she was a mother. She was my mother.
INSKEEP: Marilyn says her mother, Clara Luper, got the idea after a visit to New York, where she ate in restaurants alongside white people.
LUPER: Like Harriet Tubman would say, a little bit of freedom is a dangerous thing.
FADEL: So after she returned to Oklahoma, Clara Luper led more than a dozen students to the Katz Drug Store.
LUPER: And when we sat down, they asked us what did we want, and we told them we wanted to be served, and they informed us that they didn't serve coloreds.
INSKEEP: So the students stayed in their seats until closing and returned the next day and the day after that.
LUPER: When people would spit on us, our responsibility was to turn our heads and keep our cool.
INSKEEP: Eventually, the store agreed to integrate the lunch counters.
FADEL: What's happening today is a reminder that divisive moments of the past can be unifying now. Oklahoma City begins a three-day celebration.
LUPER: We're going to make sure that history reflects what we did here in Oklahoma City.
INSKEEP: Marilyn Luper's mom did not live to see this day, but her daughter remembers.
LUPER: She would say all the time, I want you to believe in the sun when the sun didn't shine and to believe in the rain when the rain didn't fall and to believe in a god that we've never seen. That's the way she would want to be remembered.
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