History teacher Clara Luper (1923–2011) and the NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma City that she advised initiated some of the first sit-ins in the civil rights movement, beginning in 1958. The efforts of Luper and the Youth Council succeeded in desegregating lunch counters at all the stores of a major drug store chain in four states and nearly all the restaurants in Oklahoma City. In this excerpt from NBC’s The American Revolution of ’63, broadcast September 2, 1963, Luper challenges the opinion of the owner of a segregated amusement park that Oklahoma City is not ready for integration.
Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Courtesy of NBC News
