Clara Ester, activist who rushed to Martin Luther King Jr. after he was shot, dies at 78
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Clara Ester, an activist who as a 20-year-old college student rushed to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s side when he was shot, has died.
Ester, who died on July 9 at the age of 78, was among a few remaining witnesses to King's 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.
Ester Grew up in Memphis attending Centenary United Methodist Church, where her pastor was civil rights leader the Rev. James Lawson.
"We used to joke about colored water being Kool-Aid and the white water just being water, and so that satisfied us as children," Ester told The Associated Press in 2018, around the 50th anniversary of King's death. "But until you see the racism, until you see what has been withheld from you because of your color -- 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."
Civil rights issues were often discussed from the pulpit of her church, Ester said. Lawson was very involved in the sanitation workers' strike, so it was natural for her to become involved too.
"I got to the point that I didn't miss a mass meeting," she said. "I picketed every day that the picket lines were up."
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.
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.
When she was finally allowed to go home, her parents asked if she was OK.
"I said, 'No, I'm not OK. There's something wrong with this.' And it was many months later that I guess at some point, I just broke down," Ester said.