Clara Luper never attained the widespread fame of Rosa Parks in the civil rights movement. She never became the household word that Parks deservedly did.
But someone had to lead the first sit-in to protest the exclusion of blacks in public places. That someone was Clara Luper. In 1958, she and about a dozen others ordered cold drinks at a lunch counter in Oklahoma City.
Clara Luper has died.
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
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Bob Collins