Revival of civil rights landmark Freedom Center reveals past scars, future hopes

Courtesy of Atelier Cory Henry

A longtime civil rights landmark, the Freedom Center, is getting a long overdue overhaul as part of efforts to remember and keep alive the vision of those who fought for equality and an end to discrimination in Oklahoma City. 

The building, at 2609 N Martin Luther King Ave., was originally a Mobil gas station prior to being purchased and transformed into the home of the NAACP Youth Council. It was there that school teacher Clara Luper guided efforts to take the 1964 Civil Rights Act from the law of the land and make it a reality. 

As leaders of the movement passed, including Luper, the Freedom Center fell into disuse. Closed in 2011, the property went into receivership under Leonard Benton, retired former CEO of Urban League of Oklahoma City. A reconstructed board has since raised $1 million to bring the Freedom Center back to life with additional endowment funds for operations. 

“This building survived a lot,” Benton said. “The building was threatened. There was a bombing. People’s lives were in danger. It reminds us freedom is not free.” 

The building was firebombed on Sept. 11, 1968.

In recent weeks the cracked brick façade has been stripped away as part of efforts to repair the building structure. The monument wall honoring civil rights heroes that for decades stood in front of the Freedom Center was recently removed for restoration of names and images by Wilbert Memorials. 

The monument will return when the Freedom Center reopens, but stacked in a 54-degree angle at the corner entry facing Martin Luther King Avenue and NE 25. That angle, Benton said, is intended to reflect the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that struck down “separate but equal” segregation laws. 

“It possesses a lot of the creative work that Ms. Luper did to give tribute to many of the people of previous generations whose efforts people of the ‘60s and ‘70s were standing on,” Benton said. “I have seen the documentation at the Oklahoma Historical Society from the Luper collection that has biographical information for each of the individuals honored on the monument, so we will be able to tell an accurate story.”

Once completed, the Freedom Center will be home to a permanent physical archive of the city’s civil rights movement that will include the desk and office where Luper worked, the public amplifier and speaker used at protests, and two pianos used as part of organizing rallies. 

Among those overseeing efforts to keep the civil rights legacy alive are those who were children when Luper led them on lunch counter protests in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  

“Joyce Henderson (one of the original sit-in protesters) came in and went to the two pianos and started singing civil rights rally songs,” Benton said. “We think it’s very important how those pianos and music represent the movement, the spirit and the agenda of creating excitement for the marches.” 

The Freedom Center is part of a planned 5-acre campus and a larger effort to tell the civil rights story and keep it alive. At the opposite end of the campus, at E Madison and Martin Luther King Avenue, $16 million in MAPS 4 funding will pay for construction of a Clara Luper civil rights center that will serve as both a civil rights museum and event space. 

The Freedom Center was originally also funded as part of MAPS 4, but in an effort to deal with rising construction costs and to finish the Freedom Center early, its funding was shifted to the Clara Luper center.  

The Freedom Center is now being privately funded, as is the Clara Luper Sit-in Plaza, a monument portraying the 1958 Katz lunch counter sit-in at Robinson Avenue and Main Street. That sit-in involving school children led by Luper was one of the first in the country and inspired the more well-known Greensboro sit-in by college students two years later. 

Luper was and remains a figure of national prominence with her death noted in the New York Times and the downtown Oklahoma City post office named in her honor. 

When the Freedom Center property was purchased in 1967, Luper said the goal was to “provide opportunities for deprived children to grow up properly, to learn the value of self-help and to see the adult world supported by a sense of belonging.” 

After the firebombing in 1968, Luper was assisted in fundraising by then Lt. Gov. George Night and civic leader Stanton Young. The vision was to go beyond simply rebuilding. Luper and the NAACP hoped to raise money to build a second building that would house a civil rights library, classrooms and administrative offices. 

 The original Freedom Center was rebuilt, the remainder of the vision was never realized as Luper’s group had to deal with yet another firebombing in 1970. The new campus is seen as accomplishing Luper’s original vision. 

Jabee Williams, part of a new, younger group of civil rights activists, said when he attended high school, he was assigned a large Oklahoma history book that didn’t include one mention of Luper or her efforts to end segregation and discrimination. 

“Part of the reason we do these things is so our kids won’t have to go through them,” Williams said. “We want to make sure they see what we’ve gone through and that we don’t repeat these things. The continuation of the fight for civil rights is seen in a lot of things we’re seeing playing out every single day. And if I don’t get up and fight and work then all of the work Ms. Clara Luper did was for nothing.” 

Source: Steve Lackmeyer, The Oklahoman