'My mother would be joyous,' says Clara Luper's daughter at sit-in monument announcement

The design for a downtown Oklahoma City monument depicting the 13 Black children who participated in the first Katz Drug Store sit-in led by Clara Luper was announced Wednesday.

The $3.6 million bronze monument — with sculptures featuring the Katz lunch counter, the 13 children and the waitress who refused to serve them — will be part of the Clara Luper Sit-In Plaza at Robinson and Main, where the drug store once stood. Planning of the monument began in 2018, when Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt tasked a committee with commemorating the historic sit-in that led to desegregation in local businesses.

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Brooklyn-based sculptor Ivan Schwartz, co-founder of StudioEIS, has been chosen as the artist. The monument is slated to be finished in 2024, and Schwartz said with a total of 14 sculptures, it's the largest project he's done to date.

Marilyn Luper Hildreth, daughter of Clara Luper and one of the original sit-in participants, expressed her gratitude for the monument and said she was proud to see it happen.

"My mother would be joyous," Hildreth said. "All the times that we had to get spit on, kicked, talked about, ridiculed and abused was not in vain."

The Plaza foundation has so far raised about $500,000, and the public phase of fundraising will begin soon, said foundation co-chair John Kennedy.

The artwork will be joined by a sculpture of Luper by local sculptor LaQuincy Reed, current featured artist in residence at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel.

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Monument sculptor says 'we must remember' sit-in at Katz Drug Store

Schwartz and his team were in town this week to conduct interviews with sit-in participants and begin preliminary work on the monument site.

Hoping to understand what led the children to the drug store that day, Schwartz said he spent hours talking with participants.

"We're really zeroed in on a moment in time," Schwartz said. "Two and a half days of meeting and having a conversation with people about what happened a long time ago, we came to a consensus about what exactly happened, when it happened, what moment everybody decided to go to Katz's Drug Store."

Since its 1977 founding, Schwartz said StudioEIS has made more sculptures of this type than any other American studio.

In the last decade, he said the studio has watched as communities who have been left out of public commemorations are now being acknowledged, and the sit-in monument is another example of that.

"We are here to say, 'Something happened here,'" Schwartz said. "And not only do we not want to forget, we must remember."

'Civil rights history is Oklahoma City history'

Luper, a teacher and NAACP youth leader, led the first sit-in at Katz just after a trip to New York City where her students performed her play "Brother President." There, she and her students experienced for the first time being able to order and eat inside a restaurant.

Believing they should be able to do the same in their hometown, they became pioneers in a movement that spread across the country.

"I'm so glad that we came down that night and sat down," Hildreth said. "Because when we sat down, young people all across this nation started standing up."

And while the sit-ins started downtown, Mayor Holt said the city has not adequately honored the movement publicly.

Placing the monument in the middle of downtown is a way to ensure all Oklahoma City residents and visitors can learn about the impact those brave steps taken by the sit-in participants had on Oklahoma City and beyond, Holt said.

"For too long, we have sort of pushed commemoration of the civil rights movement in our city and honoring African American heroes to the northeast," Holt said. "Civil rights history is Oklahoma City history, and it needs to exist in the heart of our city where all people ... (can) be a part of it and engage with it."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC Katz Drug Store sit-in, Clara Luper to be honored with monument