![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ClaraEster.jpg\")
Clara Ester (Image via NNPA)<\/p>\nBy The Carolinian<\/p>\n
NASHVILLE \u2014 Clara Ester, an activist who as a 20-year-old college student rushed to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s side when he was shot, has died.<\/p>\n
Ester, who died on July 9 at the age of 78, was among a few remaining witnesses to King\u2019s assassination and its immediate aftermath in Memphis. With the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. in February and Ester this month, King aide and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young is believed to be the last surviving eyewitness to the shooting.<\/p>\n
Ester Grew up in Memphis attending Centenary United Methodist Church, where her pastor was civil rights leader the Rev. James Lawson.
\u201cWe used to joke about colored water being Kool-Aid and the white water just being water, and so that satisfied us as children,\u201d Ester told The Associated Press in 2018, around the 50th anniversary of King\u2019s death. \u201cBut until you see the racism, until you see what has been withheld from you because of your color \u2014 is what started to really truly anger me. And I knew if there was a movement that could help change any of that, I had to be in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Clara Ester (Image via NNPA)<\/p>\n
Civil rights issues were often discussed from the pulpit of her church, Ester said. Lawson was very involved in the sanitation workers\u2019 strike, so it was natural for her to become involved too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to the point that I didn\u2019t miss a mass meeting,\u201d she said. \u201cI picketed every day that the picket lines were up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even 50 years later, she clearly remembered the impact of hearing King\u2019s speech at the Mason Temple the night before he was assassinated and how it seemed to foreshadow his death the next day.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had seen the mountaintop,\u201d Ester said. \u201cIt was evident on the balcony \u2014 how calm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ester had gone to the Lorraine Motel for dinner on April 4, 1968, when she saw King chatting on the balcony with people below. Then she heard a shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was speaking calmly and pleasantly to a crowd,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so he was happy at that moment. But to lay there with his eyes open, looking toward heaven. He had seen the promised land, and he may not get there with us, but he promised that we as a people will see the promised land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ester said she ran to King and saw he was struggling for air. She tried to loosen his belt and asked someone to bring towels to try to staunch the bleeding. After King was taken away by ambulance, she had to stay at the hotel, where she was questioned by police.<\/p>\n
When she was finally allowed to go home, her parents asked if she was OK.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018No, I\u2019m not OK. There\u2019s something wrong with this.\u2019 And it was many months later that I guess at some point, I just broke down,\u201d Ester said.<\/p>\n
She left Memphis to work elsewhere that summer, and as soon as she finished school, she left for good.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just too much to \u2026 it hurt me that it happened, but it hurt me that it happened in my hometown, that that\u2019s the legacy for this city,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ester moved to Mobile, Alabama, where she found work as a neighborhood organizer at the Dumas Wesley Community Center, a Christian service program supporting children, seniors and people experiencing homelessness, according to her obituary. She later was named the executive director of the center, serving in that role until she retired in 2006.<\/p>\n
In 1986, she was commissioned as a deaconess in the United Methodist Church, a type of lay minister . She remained active in the church throughout her life and held leadership roles that included serving as the national vice president of United Methodist Women.<\/p>\n
Methodist Bishop David Graves met Ester when he was assigned to the Alabama-West Florida Conference in 2016. He wrote in a remembrance that Ester did not take to him at first, but gradually they came to love each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, Clara Ester, for a life well lived and for loving me. It changed me,\u201d he wrote. \u201cClara will be missed immensely, but what a day of rejoicing is going on in heaven. For love will always find a way for those who trust in Jesus and seek to love even in our differences.\u201d
Originally published by The Carolinian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By The Carolinian NASHVILLE \u2014 Clara Ester, an activist who as a 20-year-old college student rushed to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-391320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}