Clara Luper stood up by sitting down
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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.
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