Oklahoma Superstar : Interview with Clara Luper

[RoyGBiv]

Alternet : http://alternet.org/story/23812/

In 1957, high school history teacher Clara Luper was given the opportunity to escape segregated Oklahoma by spending a few days in New York presenting "Brother President," a play she wrote about Martin Luther King. Luper and the group of students she brought with her were able to go about their day like everyone else and order sodas from non-segregated lunch counters. As their bus journeyed back through the Jim Crow South, Luper vowed to take on segregation and explained how she was going to do it in her book, Behold the Walls ...

Shortly thereafter, Luper and 12 members of the NAACP Youth Council, ages six to 17, walked into the Katz Drug Store in downtown Oklahoma City and ordered 13 Coca-Colas. A typical response from Luper's fellow white customers was, "The nerve of the niggers trying to eat in our places. Who does Clara Luper think she is? She is nothing but a damned fool, the black thing." Thanks to patience and persistence, Katz, a major drug store, eventually desegregated the lunch counters in all of its 38 stores in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa ...

What is your opinion of the Bush administration and what they've done over the past four years?

What have they done over the past four years? I know one thing: One thousand seven hundred of our bright young Americans have died for a cause that I don't understand. Naturally, I'm speaking from a mother's standpoint. I would like to see a war where old men have to go and fight. That would be the kind of war I would like to see. Bush and his group should go over there and send our boys home.

[KatyaR]

1. What a great interview . . .

I thought all the Oklahoma pieces on Stories in America were very good. I also thought her interview of Rabbi Cohen was excellent. I need to go back and read more of the earlier entries.

I especially appreciate the fact that someone thought there might be something interesting to report about here in Oklahoma.

http://www.storiesinamerica.org/

[RoyGBiv]

2. I thought so too ...

I was a bit shocked, yet delighted, to see it. I've always found it a bit disturbing she and the members of her group receive such little notoriety or recognition outside academic circles.