Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

September 6, 1958

On September 6, 1958, the Cleveland Call and Post reported that Clara Luper would be the featured speaker at the Cleveland NAACP membership campaign at E. Mt. Zion Baptist Church: “Mrs. Clara Luper, the woman who is leading hundreds of Negro children in a silent, Ghandi-type assault on Oklahoma’s invisible wall of segregation, will come to Cleveland next Friday to tell how her ‘silent campaign’ has opened the doors of 19 white churches and several soda fountains in the Sooner State.”

When the Call and Post reported on the Greensboro sit-ins in February 1960, the paper opened the story by referencing Luper’s work in Oklahoma City: “Taking their cue from similar protests by youth in Oklahoma City, a group of well-dressed Negro college students staged a sit down strike in the downtown Woolworth store last week and vowed to continue it in relays until Negroes were served at the lunch counter.”

For more on the web about the Oklahoma City protest and Clara Luper, see: 
Alison Shay, “Remembering the Oklahoma City Sit-Ins”
NewsOK, “Timeline of the 1958 Sit-Ins”
Dennis Hevesi, “Clara Luper, a Leader of Civil Rights Sit-Ins, Dies at 88” 

For more on the Greensboro sit-ins, see February 13, 1960 post.

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