Coming together right now for rights

Many have said she should call her friend Oprah, but Clara Luper is determined to raise money to support the Oklahoma African American History Plaza from fellow Oklahomans.

“We’re going to do it ourselves” is even the campaign slogan for the plaza, schedule to be dedicated May 17, 2007, on the State Capital grounds.

“I know I could call Oprah if I wanted to,” Luper said. “But I think it’s time to show everyone that Oklahoma cares about this sort of thing, and we can do it ourselves.”

Luper was just one of many familiar and new faces at the Respect Diversity Foundation’s artist breakfast Thursday morning, taking place at founder’s Mike and Joan Korenblit’s home in Edmond.

“It’s so great to look out and see new faces here today,” Mike Korenblit said. “This is always great because the more new faces we see, the more diversity we are adding to our programs.”

The programs are presented to schools across the state, teaching children as young as pre-kindergarten all the way to grown adults the importance of understanding and respecting one another.

BREAKFAST: Luper lead 1958 sit-in in Oklahoma City

The foundation has even turned these programs into an annual art event, which takes place at the Omniplex museum every spring.

“Every year our speakers travel around to the different schools and share a story of diversity and respect with the children,” Joan Korenblit said. “The children will then create their own interpretive symbols of what the story they heard means to them specifically.

“We then gather all of these symbols together and create a wonderful exhibit at the museum.”

Luper is one of the foundation’s speakers and she is gearing up to begin her year of presentations beginning the end of this month in Oklahoma schools.

In the past, Luper has spoken to children about what it would take to create a world of peace and tolerance.

“If you could take one thing out of the world and replace it with another, what would it be?” Luper asked. “Replace hate with love or ignorance with understanding.”

Luper, no doubt, is one of Oklahoma’s foremost in knowledge of peace and equality, having been one of the state’s first civil rights activists.

Born in 1923, she grew up near Hoffman. It was in 1958 that Luper led a group of students in a “sit-in” at a local lunch counter.

The group ordered cokes and started a riot. Not discouraged, the group returned the next day and was given a soft drink at the counter. This started the first of many sit-ins across the nation.

February is “Black History Month” and what a pleasure it will be for students to hear Oklahoma’s own civil rights leaders during that time, Mike Korenblit said.

Korenblit also acts as a presenter for the group, sharing with students his own wonderful story of respect.

“When I was a small boy, my father took me out to a local park and told me to drink from a fountain. He then asked me how it tasted and I told him it was delicious.

“He then told me to read the sign on the fountain, which said “Whites only.”

Korenblit’s father then took him to another fountain and asked him to drink again.”

I drank from this fountain and told him it tasted exactly the same,” he said. “Then my father told me to read the sign on this fountain, which read “Coloreds only.”

Reared in a Jewish family, Korenblit’s father reminded him that because of signs such as these, they had grandparents, aunts and uncles who were no longer with them. Korenblit says he never forgot the lesson his father taught him that day.