OKLAHOMA CITY – Work finally began Wednesday on one of the most heavily anticipated and culturally significant projects of MAPS 4 as City and community leaders gathered to break ground on the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center.
Celebrating not just the life of OKC resident and Civil Rights icon Clara Luper, but the full scope and history of the Civil Rights Movement, the future Eastside landmark is planned to be part community center, part museum, and part educational hub, honoring Luper’s lifetime of teaching and community organizing.
The 17,000 square foot, $17 million building will stand at NE 24th St. and N. Martin Luther King Ave., next door to the recently rejuvenated and reopened Freedom Center, the original headquarters for OKC’s NAACP Youth Council and Luper’s longtime organizing headquarters.
“This is a really important new day,” Ward 7 City Councilman Camal Pennington told the energetic and palpably excited crowd before the ceremonial groundbreaking. “In this building, we will honor and preserve a sacred legacy and invest deeply in the future of our community.”
Long time coming
The Clara Luper Civil Rights Center was first approved as a publicly funded City project all the way back in 2019 as part of the MAPS 4 package. But while some other MAPS 4 projects (like the new Diversion Hub headquarters) are celebrating historic completions and ribbon-cuttings, the Clara Luper Center is only now just breaking ground.
According to comments made Wednesday by Mayor David Holt, that’s because it’s taken many of the intervening years to settle on and secure a budget that can bring the full vision and community-wide scope of the project to life.
Holt explained that when the early advocates of the Civil Rights Center first pitched the project during planning for MAPS 4, it was pitched as a much smaller $5 million project, but as building and construction plans began to take shape, a much larger and more realistic budget was needed.
While the initial approval in MAPS allocated $16 million for the combined projects of constructing the new Civil Rights Center and renovating the Freedom Center next door, advocates were then able to secure private funding for the Freedom Center, leaving the full amount available for the new building named for Luper.
An additional $10 million approved just last year in the City’s General Obligation bond gave the new center its operating budget, bringing the full amount for the project to $17.1 million for the construction of the building and $9.6 million for staffing and operations.
“Ultimately, what today is about is something that is so important to our city,” Holt told the crowd. “I cannot wait to see generations of school kids come to this place. I can’t wait to see visitors come here and see that this is the kind of city that we want to be. We want to tell these stories.”
‘Getting the story told’
Of course, the star of the speaking lineup before the official groundbreaking Wednesday was Marilyn Luper Hildreth, Clara’s daughter and herself a modern giant of OKC’s continuing Civil Rights work.
Hildreth has personally helped to lead the years-long push for a community and educational center that can not only honor her mother’s legacy, but also continue the work to which she and so many others dedicated their lives.
“We have to do a better job in getting the story told,” Hildreth said during an impassioned and openly political speech peppered with some big laughs and big emotions and answered with rousing applause after.
Inside the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center, that story of the struggle for lasting Civil Rights in the 1950s and 60s can be told in the community’s own words and through the community’s own eyes, laying bare the realities of government violence, political pushback, and the eventual victories of the Civil Rights Act.
But, as the central tenets of those victories are recently being challenged and dismantled, Hildreth said that it’s more important than ever to offer a space that’s as much for learning about the struggles of previous generations as it is about preparing for the new struggles of the next.
“We’re going to tell our story because…if nobody’s going to tell it, we’re going to have to tell the story,” Hildreth said. “This Clara Luper Civil Rights Center is a beacon of hope. It’s hope for the hopeless. It’s a dream for the dreamers.”
Brett Fieldcamp is the owner and Editor in Chief of Oklahoma City Free Press. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly two decades and served as Arts & Entertainment Editor before purchasing the company from founder Brett Dickerson in 2026.
He is also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
