Filed by Rachel Hubbard in Feature, Local News.
June 9, 2011

Oklahoma civil rights leader Clara Luper has died in Oklahoma City at age 88.  Luper died Wednesday night after a lengthy illness.  In August 1958, Luper led a group of three adult chaperones and 14 members of the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council in a sit-in at the Katz Drug Store lunch counter. The group was refused service but refused to leave.  The sit-in lasted several days before Katz agreed to integrate its lunch counters in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. Over the next six years, the local NAACP group held sit-ins that desegregated virtually all eating establishments in Oklahoma City.  Luper is survived by two daughters and a son.  Clara Luper was 88.