City Center Post Office Officially Renamed After Civil Rights Activist Clara Luper

Local officials and the U.S. Postal Service say Clara Luper's efforts for equal rights for all were iconic and showed bravery. She is now the first person ever in Oklahoma City to have a postal service named after them.

The City Center Post Office will now be called The Clara Luper Post Office. Gwendolynn Fuller Mukes was with Luper when she led the first lunch counter sit-in over 60 years ago.

“I was tired of being a second-class citizen. It's as simple as that. I thought that we deserved the right to have a coke, to sit down and have a small coke, but I was just tired,” Fuller Mukes said.

Fuller Mukes said instead of feeling tired, today she rejoices. Mayor David Holt agrees and said today is a day of celebration, but also showed how far Oklahoma City has come and has to go.

“The name of a Black woman who was arrested two dozen times by this city while fighting for racial equality is now emblazoned on a public building that once was blown up by a White supremacist. History moves in fits and starts but as Dr. Martin Luther King, President Obama, and others have said its ark bends toward justice,” Mayor Holt said.

Congresswoman Kendra Horn wrote a bill to designate the Downtown OKC Post Office after Luper. Former President Donald Trump signed the legislation earlier this year.