OKCPS to name new office after local teacher, civil rights leader

At their regularly scheduled business meeting last night Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education unanimously adopted a resolution naming the district’s future administrative offices after one of the district’s former teachers. The site will be named The Clara Luper Center for Educational Services.

“I feel honored, elated and proud. My mother dedicated her life to education, always calling her students her 'diamonds'. She believed that all children could learn, and she took time to find different ways to teach and more importantly to reach each one of them,” said Marilyn Luper Hildreth, Clara Luper’s daughter.

“She used to say ‘I want you to go places I’ve never been and dream the dreams I’ve never dreamed - and the only way you can do it is through education.’ She touched the lives of so many people here in Oklahoma City, in our state and even our nation. I’m so grateful that the OKCPS Board of Education is considering naming their new building after my mother.”

“I am thrilled," said OKCPS Board Chair Paula Lewis. "In addition to her Civil Rights work, Ms. Luper was a remarkable OKCPS teacher who touched many young lives for nearly 40 years.”

“She was the embodiment of the fight for equity—a cause that our Board of Education continues to champion through policy and practice with dreams of equal access to educational opportunity for every child—regardless of their race, socioeconomic status or zip code.”

“Clara Luper is a national treasure in the fight for civil rights for all Americans and her leadership in the 1958 OKC Sit-In Movement was the first and longest recorded in U.S. History,” said Charles Henry, Board Member representing District 1. “It will be a well-deserved honor for the OKCPS Board, the City of Oklahoma City, and State of Oklahoma, to have the new administration building named after her.”

“I have had the honor of knowing and working with Mrs. Luper during my work at the Oklahoma City Urban League in the 80’s and 90’s,” said Ruth Veales, Board Member representing District 5. “She was a wealth of knowledge and wisdom on so many levels. The timing could not be better for our district as we move forward in the spirit of equity.”

“I hope every time someone says the name of this building, they are reminded of Mrs. Luper’s work and her legacy,” said Carrie Jacobs, Board Member representing District 3 and Chair of the Operations Committee for the OKCPS Board of Education. “I hope that every time we say her name, we are reminded to carry that torch.”

The motion to adopt the naming resolution was proposed by Board Member Veales, seconded by Board Member Carrie Jacobs and passed unanimously.

The new building will be located at 615 Classen Boulevard and is slated to open in Winter, 2019.

About Clara Luper :

Clara Luper (1923-2011), was a teacher, civic leader and a pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. Born in rural Okfuskee County, she obtained her B.A. in mathematics from Langston University and in 1950 she became the first African American student in the graduate history program at the University of Oklahoma, where she received a M.A. in History Education.

Luper was also the advisor for the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council. In 1958, she led the Oklahoma City sit-in movement, where alongside members of the NAACP and her two young children, she successfully conducted nonviolent sit-in protests in drugstores and restaurants that helped end segregation policies in the downtown area.

Luper continued her advocacy efforts in the state helping desegregate hundreds of establishments in Oklahoma. She was also an activist at the national level and participated in the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches.

During a 40-year teaching career, Luper spent time at Dunjee High School, Douglass Mid-High School, NW Classen High School and John Marshall Mid-High School.