OKLAHOMA CITY — On August 19, 1958, Clara Luper , a history teacher and advisor to the NAACP Youth Council, led 13 Black children into the Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City for what would become one of the first major sit-ins of the civil rights movement.
The courageous group sat at the segregated lunch counter and ordered Cokes, challenging the store’s discriminatory policy that prohibited Black customers from dining alongside white patrons.
The group was refused service at the counter, sparking two days of sit-ins and a movement that eventually would pave the way to nationwide desegregation and civil rights guarantees under the U.S. Constitution.
On Monday, the daughter of Clara Luper, Marilyn Luper Hildreth, who was among the original “sit-inners,” was among a different kind o