Clara Luper, you're a pretty rad lady

Background on Clara Luper, She was a black teacher in Oklahoma who organized some of the first sit-ins in America at the beginning of the Civil Rights' Movement. She eventually became known as "the mother of the civil right's movement"

What does being Christian mean to you?

Being a Christian means expressing Christian ideals all wrapped up in one package that's called love. That's all I have to do is love. Love your enemies. If you can love, you can live. That has really paid off for me because today I am so fortunate in that I have 90 students and I'm paying their room and board at Oklahoma City University. A man put up a million dollars in my name and another organization put up $300,000. This means so much to me because when I went to college, my mother had to move to the servant's quarters so I could go to school.

Would you mind sharing a few more stories from your past that stand out?

I had the opportunity to debate a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and that was quite interesting. I could hardly wait because I know the key to winning a debate is to make a person angry. At the beginning of our debate, I said, I am so happy to be here to debate this issue with my brother. He got mad and he told me he was not my brother. I apologized and said, you've got to remember sir, I'm a Christian and I've been told that all men are brothers. (laughs) That made him so mad. In place of debating the issue, he started saying that he was not my brother. I said, sir, I'm apologizing to you. That's what I've been told: God our father, man our brother, but maybe I have to go back and get my Bible and reread it.

How did the rest of the debate go?

I won it. I won. (laughs) I have another story. We walked to Lawton trying to integrate an amusement park. The man who owned it had me arrested because it was a swimming park and he didn't want blacks to swim. He said he didn't want me swimming in his pool and I looked at him and didn't say anything because I couldn't swim. (laughs)

What eventually happened?

We finally got it opened. The whites weren't always like that. We had one white man, the owner of a park, put us in jail and his dad came and got us out. (laughs) You can never tell. In studying history, only 25 percent of people in the south had anything to do with slavery. You want to make sure you're picking out the right ones. But who can tell who is the right one? That's why you have to love everybody.

-This is an excerpt from an interview she gave which is definitely worth the read.
anywho, this is a thank you to the rad lady who is paying for my college.

you can read the rest of the interview at:
http://storiesinamerica.blogspot.com/2005/07/oklahoma-sit-ins-conversation-with.html