Oklahoma Journeys
Week of August 16, 2008
Katz Lunch Counter Sit-In, 1958
This week on Oklahoma Journeys we examine the beginnings of a new strategy for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, and it got its start right here in Oklahoma. Clara Luper of Oklahoma City helped begin the sit-in protest that desegregated lunch counters, diners, and cafes across the country. It’s the beginning of a movement this week on Oklahoma Journeys from the Oklahoma History Center.
From the Oklahoma History Center, this is Oklahoma Journeys. I’m Michael Dean.
Into the 20th century Jim Crow laws existed in most states and cities dictating that blacks and whites were to have completely separate lives. Neighborhoods, businesses, schools, churches, theaters, even drinking fountains and bathrooms were segregated. For an African-American to cross any of these social boundaries might mean severe punishment or even death. As the civil rights movement picked up speed following World War Two, Martin Luther King and others began to increase the drive and push for a truly equal United States. It was in this week of 1958 that Clara Luper began a movement in Oklahoma City that shook the foundations of the country.
As an African-American Luper felt the sting of prejudice and hatred. She also ran a local youth group of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP. The kids of Clara Luper’s youth group brought up the subject of restaurant and lunch counter segregation. In the 1950s in Oklahoma and most southern states, blacks weren’t allowed to eat in most drug and department store lunch counters. They would have to pay their money and get their orders to go or eat in some out-of-the-way back room or even in the alley. Clara Luper and her youth group children decided that, in the manner of Martin Luther King and his policy of non-violent protest, they would begin to try to make some changes in Oklahoma City.
On August 19, 1958, Clara Luper led thirteen kids down to the Katz drugstore lunch counter and demanded thirteen colas; they had the money but they didn’t get their drinks. They did receive, however, the attention of the country. Clara Luper and the kids sat in the lunchroom for most of the day refusing to move until they were served. They spent the day enduring food and drink being thrown at them as well as the expected racial slurs of the intolerant and uneducated. As the kids and Luper prepared for the second day of the Katz sit in they received the news that the Katz company had changed their policy and now in all 39 stores across the country, everyone was to be served and to be allowed to eat in the main dining area. The first sit-in protest in the country was a success. Luper and her youth council kids, now joined by dozens of others, made their around slowly but steadily breaking down the walls of prejudice within Oklahoma City; one-by-one the restaurants and diners all changed their policies to accommodate African-Americans.
The eyes of the country were on Oklahoma during all of this and the strategy begun by Clara Luper in this week of 1958 was soon picked up and utilized by civil rights groups all over the United States. But the Oklahoma City sit-ins were the first by any NCAAP group, and they were successful and they were non-violent. You see a re-creation of the Katz lunch counter in the African-American exhibit “Realizing The Dream” at the Oklahoma History Center, NE 23rd Street just east of the state capitol in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma Journeys is a production of the Oklahoma Historical Society, dedicated to the collection, preservation, and sharing of our state’s past. I’m Michael Dean.