Clara Luper’s daughter speaks on moment that sparked an OKC youth-led sit-in movement

In Oklahoma City in the late 1950s, schools had begun to integrate Black and white students, but lunch counters, restaurants and other public spaces were still divided by race.

Marilyn Luper Hildreth was just a child at the time, but she knew African Americans lived in a designated part of town, the zoo was only open to them one day a week, and when they went to a restaurant, African Americans were forced to stand up or eat out of a brown paper sack.

But that wasn't the case everywhere. A trip to New York City gave Marilyn her first experience with more freedom and a more integrated society.

"We had a different feeling in our bones, feeling free like that," Hildreth said.

When she returned to Oklahoma City, she explored how she could bring those changes here. Marilyn is the daughter of Spencer history teacher and activist, Clara Luper. So, she had some help. There were also other kids involved from the NAACP Youth Council that Marilyn was part of. First, they attempted to negotiate with business owners and the Oklahoma City Restaurant Association. Their goal was to be able to sit in a restaurant and eat, like everyone else.

"Finally, they came back and they told us 'no.' That their patrons did not want to sit next to somebody as Black as us in a restaurant," Hildreth remembers. "And we could not understand it, because we were good enough to clean their houses. Our grandparents are good enough to raise their kids. But we were not able to sit down at a table like anyone else? It was hard to understand as a child."

It was 10-year-old Marilyn who came up with the idea for a way forward. She suggested a peaceful protest at Kats Drug Store, right in the middle of downtown OKC, at Main Street and Robinson. A busy hub with a bus stop right out front. Hildreth says her older brother Calvin told her she must be losing her mind.

 "He said you're going to get all of us killed, because those white folks are going to kill us, if we go downtown and just sit there," said Hildreth.

After a group vote, Clara, Marilyn, and 12 other kids headed down to Katz on the evening of August 19, 1958. She remembers being frightened as the group walked up to the lunch counter and asked for service. When they were denied, they just continued to occupy the stools at the counter, pulling out their schoolbooks to read. The group stayed until close that first night, then came back the next day, and again for a third day.

"If I tell you I was never afraid, I would be lying," Hildreth said. "Anytime you demand change, it's fearful, because you don't know and you have no history of what to expect."

Hildreth says the hardest thing for her to understand through these protests was how to accept the bitterness of other people.

"I could not understand as a child how adults could spit on you and kick you and call you out of your name, and push you, only because of the color of our skin," Hildreth said. "I couldn't understand that. How can you hate me to that degree?"

Hildreth said her mother always taught them that nothing happens in the struggle for equal rights until they make it happen. She also taught them passive, non-violent resistance.

Hildreth said her mother Clara, would advise them, "If somebody slapped me, turn the other cheek. If they spit on you, wipe it off. If they kick you, move your foot. Do good to those that did evil to you."

After spending three days occupying the lunch counter at Katz, Clara and the kids got what they came for. Katz Drug Store opened its doors to people of all races here in OKC, but also at other stores they owned nationwide. But that was only the beginning. Hildreth says every Saturday when they weren't in school, the kids would go sit in different stores and restaurants, fighting for more freedom.

The Oklahoma City sit-ins helped desegregate dozens of restaurants and public spaces here. Then in the 1960s, the movement spread nationwide.