Clara Mae Luper was born in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, to Ezell and Isabell Shepard on May 3, 1923. She attended all-black schools and was bussed several miles to Grayson High School where she graduated in a class of five. After graduating from the segregated Langston University, Luper became the first African American student to enroll in the history department at the University of Oklahoma, earning a master’s degree in 1951.
Luper was one of the early leaders in the civil rights movement in Oklahoma during the 1950s. She taught history in various Oklahoma City public schools for forty-one years and became the sponsor of the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council. In 1958, working with this group, she led the earliest “sit-ins” in Oklahoma and some of the first in United States. Through these protests she and other civil rights activists succeeded in integrating many public facilities in Oklahoma City and across the state by 1964.
In 1957, Luper escorted her Dunjee High School students to New York City to perform a play she had written, Brother President: The Story of Dr. Martin Luther King, for a national freedom rally. Inspired by non-violent activism, she and her students returned determined to end segregation in Oklahoma. They staged a sit-in at the Katz Drugstore counter in August 1958. This sit-in led to numerous other demonstrations at lunch counters, cafeterias, churches, and amusement parks, as well as marches, voter registration drives, and boycotts. She was arrested twenty-six times for her civil rights activities. The Oklahoma City Council responded with an ordinance ending racial discrimination shortly before the national 1964 Civil Rights Act. Luper participated, as well, in the civil rights marches with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Washington, D.C. and in Selma, Alabama.
Luper also fought for the integration of Oklahoma City schools and organized the Oklahoma City Sanitation Strike in 1969. She was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1972, and founded the Freedom Center, Inc. In 1979, she published her memoir, Behold the Walls, and later developed the Black Voices Magazine, now called, America’s Voices. Luper also hosted a radio talk show in Oklahoma City between 1960 and 1980. Luper continued to lecture on behalf of racial justice until illness forced her retirement in 2008.