Freedom Fiesta begins Thursday night in OKC

OKLAHOMA CITY ( KFOR ) – The multi-day Freedom Fiesta begins Thursday at Oklahoma Contemporary.

It’s the annual celebration and commemoration of the 1958 Katz Drug Store sit-in and the 1969 Sanitation Strike, led by Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council in OKC.

“In America, when you’re born black, you had to live black, and you goin’ die black. So, go to the hardware store and buy some tough skin,” said Marilyn Hildreth.

That’s a lesson Hildreth learned at a young age, from her mother Clara Luper, a civil rights leader.

On August 19th, 1958, Luper led 13 kids to a lunch counter at the Katz Drug Store where you couldn’t eat if you were black.

“They could go into Katz and buy anything they wanted, spend all their money, But if they got hungry, they had to get brown paper sack,” said Mildrth.

Hildreth was only 9 years old at the time. She was confused by the discrimination.

“Not knowing how person a grown up could spit on me, kick me, push me off a stool only because of the color of my skin,” said Hildreth.

They sat there, peacefully, for three days until they were served.

Jabee Williams said his aunt was one of those protestors.

“Once they were done with Katz, then they went to the next one and the next one,” said Jabee, a Clara Luper Legacy Committee Member.

Then in 1969, thousands gathered in the city, for the Black Friday Sanitation Strike, fighting for equal pay.

“The sanitation workers were making little to nothing and taking the trash and and filth out,” said Hildreth. “Four of five dollars an hour.”

55 years later, all of their efforts are celebrated through Freedom Fiesta.

Thursday, a room at Oklahoma Contemporary will be transformed into an art gallery at 6:00pm. Then there will be a panel discussion.

“We talk about what it was like for them,” said Williams.

On Friday, there will be a Choir concert at the Angie Smith Chapel at Oklahoma City University at 6:00pm.

Saturday at 9:00am, the group will reenact the historic sit in starting at Frontline Church before marching to Kaiser’s. The shop is a symbolic location, but the sit-in did not occur there.

The goal is to keep the spirit of Clara Luper alive.

“Make her name more prominent in the story of the civil rights movement,” said Williams.

And tell the story of Black History.

“Because if we don’t tell it, who will?” said Hildreth.

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