Later this Fall, Oklahoma City will dedicate a new plaza in the heart of downtown, commemorating the historic Katz Drug Store sit-ins from 1958.
The plaza at Robinson and Main Street will include 13 life-sized bronze sculptures of Clara Luper and children from the NAACP Youth Council, who peacefully protested segregation rules at the store.
We sat down with the woman who came up with the idea for the protest when she was just a child. Marilyn Luper Hildreth is the daughter of the famous Oklahoma history teacher and activist Clara Luper.
What type of discrimination were you facing at that time?
Marilyn Luper Hildreth: Blacks could not live across 8th Street. We could not go to the zoo except for one day a week. We could not eat in restaurants; we had to stand up or eat out of a brown paper sack. When we rode the buses, we had to ride in the back of the bus…