"I Have a Dream."
Brown v. Board.
Birmingham.
Selma.
The Montgomery bus boycott.
Thurgood Marshall.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Those are the nouns, the places, the events in the books that tell the ongoing story of how we got closer to the equal rights we're still working on.
They tell big pieces of the tale. They give you an idea of what had happened and what happened after, about why it happened then and why it hadn't happened yet.
They tell you about the results of work done by Clara Luper (and a pile of other people). They don't tell you about it.
So I will.
Clara Luper died Wednesday at 88 years lived -- not 88 years old, 88 years lived.
And that's the thing about her. She didn't put her time in and then take off one night. A day was an opportunity, not an obligation. Because ...
Clara Luper was, if not one in a million, one in a giant pile of people.
Clara Luper was born in the 1920s. As a percent of the U.S. population, not many people born in the 1920s went to college without the GI Bill or a good bit of wealth.
Clara Luper was born in the 1920s in Oklahoma. Oklahoma had a small pile of people going to college in the 1940s. Clara was in that small pile.
Clara Luper, a black woman, was born in the 1920s in Oklahoma. Oklahoma had a very small pile of black women attending college in the 1940s. Clara Luper was in that very small pile.
Clara Luper, a black woman, was born in the 1920s in Oklahoma and attended a historically black college for her undergraduate work. And then she attended the University of Oklahoma for her graduate work. She entered the school's graduate program in history.
Want to know how small the pile was of black women Oklahoma had in its graduate history program before Clara Luper? (If you know me, you know the answer, but do give the others some time to figure this out; I have been away for a while.)
Clara Luper was probably the first outwardly intelligent black person some of the students (and teachers) in her graduate classes had met, on account of she was the first black person in the program.
Ever.
Now, desegregating an entire graduate program in any school in any state is a pretty goddamn scary thing unless you have up and decided not to be scared (or you just happen to not scare easily). There you are, and there eeeeeeeveryone else is, and there some of them may have served in the armed forces before they were desegregated, and this being Oklahoma, some of them are probably descended from slaveholders and some of them maybe have relatives who have benefited from the literacy tests that excluded white people and some of them had --
Or you could focus on getting your degree finished, which is what Clara Luper did.
So the university's first black (and female) graduate history student, who goes and completes her master's degree and has thus already made enough history to warrant an obituary in various local newspapers once she is done living all her days, ... proceeds to not be satisfied.
Kind of makes sense. Who starts blazing a trail and then just sort of does nothing after?
Not Clara Luper, that's who.
Having desegregated higher education in Oklahoma, Luper then went about changing the face of education elsewhere in Oklahoma -- in classrooms and in life's classrooms.
Now, these days, it is no big thing to have a black teacher unless you are in an area that has few black people.
But I have to imagine that even with the segregated schools Oklahoma had in the 1950s, your average school did not have too terribly many black women teaching history with master's degrees to back them up. (Wonder how many of her students she inspired to not settle for manual labor unless they wanted to do manual labor.)
So in addition to being able to challenge anyone who got in her face by informing them that she had the degrees and life experience to do the job as she saw fit, Clara Luper up and decided that it is not enough for a history teacher to know about history; a history teacher should live and, where appropriate, change history.
And in Oklahoma in the 1950s, "where appropriate" described most of the places Clara Luper had not been.
Yet.
So she went there with some kids (who also were NAACP youth leaders, so let us not pretend they did not know what to expect and how to act, but still). Including her two oldest.
So they went to a local lunch counter where they knew they weren't welcome. And they sat.
Now, one quick note about the civil rights movement -- and by that I mean from the 1850s (or 1670s, if you prefer) on:
It is a hell of a thing these days for some of us to imagine being arrested for things like sitting or reading. I can sort of maybe possibly on a really bad day imagine some crazy town passing a law banning voting by people who can't read (that wouldn't survive a court challenge, but don't let that stop a bunch of morons), but SITTING?
Being arrested for sitting in the wrong place is, pardon my Bulgarian, fucking batshit nuts. That is some seriously fucked-up horseshit. I mean, we are talking on the level of delusional flat-earthers lalalala I can't hear you the trees are drawing cartoons on pomegranates nuckin' futz. You have to try pretty goddamn hard to get that messed ...
Oh. Right. They did try. Carry on, then.
Or ... don't. Because part of what happens when you walk in self-assured (but not haughty -- you know your rights, and you're no better or worse than anyone else) and sit and order food is first they ignore you, and then they laugh at you, and then they cover you with mustard and spit and grease (see, you thought I was going here, but I am craftier than thou), and then they assault you, and then they arrest you, and then they eventually decide it is probably best to just serve you, get paid and get on with the other customers.
Well, she did it with a bunch of youth leaders once they saw what equal could be. (Attractive woman, no? Wonder if any stupid white men tried to sidle up to her and get her to stop her uppity act if they spent some private time with her? Wonder if they were perhaps less polite than that? Wonder if she blazed some trails privately and made public the sit-ins and didn't want to encourage stupid white men by talking about how many she'd fought off?)
And the restaurant decided to start serving Clara and folks like her in three states. This woman kicked more ass than a seven-legged woman at an ass-kicking contest. (Helps that she had a pile of kids with her to help kick ass, but you still have to be there and be willing to be kicked back.)
"August – Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council conduct the largest successful sit-in to date, on drug store lunch-counters in Oklahoma City. This starts a successful six-year campaign by Luper and the Council to desegregate businesses and related institutions in Oklahoma City."
OK, so that's that counter.
Next?
Trail blaze some more. Move on to other lunch counters. Sit. Be arrested for sitting.
Fake police blotter entry:
Clara Luper, 43, was arrested in the 5400 block of Main Street for sitting. She was booked at Podunk Police Station and put in the Podunk County Jail. She bonded out, whereupon she was discovered sitting in the 5400 block of Main Street for ...
(You'll forgive me or not for the levity, but this is how I deal with the phenomenal bullshit of the fact that anyone had to do any of this. Not allowed to SIT SOMEWHERE? Where was this, Red fucking China? Oh no wait it was a day's drive north of where I live and probably actually also five minutes' drive north of where I live, given that Texas was sort of late to the game of pin the shit on the coloreds but did its level best anyway.)
Trail blaze, teach, inspire, lead or attend other civil rights events, push for more equal rights, push people in your community and others to take what you've done and make it part of the journey.
For 40 years.
And then watch a black man be inaugurated president.
May I one day be able to say I did in any one year what Clara Luper did on any one day before she ate breakfast.
I started this diary by reminding you of some of the great events in the civil rights movement.
Clara Luper's name isn't mentioned as often as it should be, considering she and her band of determined kids started an entire movement.
But they did.
And she was at Selma. And she was there for Dr. King's speech.
And you can hear her talk about her experiences here:
OETA-13 will re-air "A Conversation With ... Clara Luper" at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 6 p.m. Sunday, commemorating the life of the Oklahoma icon and civil rights movement pioneer. Luper died Wednesday evening in Oklahoma City at age 88.
Luper discusses her extraordinary life with host Dick Pryor.