Joined Memphis sanitation strike as a teenager
Clara Ester, a civil rights activist who as a 19-year-old college student ran to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s side after he was fatally shot in 1968, died July 9 at age 78, according to the Associated Press.
Ester grew up in Memphis attending Centenary United Methodist Church, where her pastor was the Rev. James Lawson, a civil rights leader. Lawson was deeply involved in the sanitation workers’ strike, and Ester said it was natural for her to become involved.
In a 2018 interview with the AP around the 50th anniversary of King’s death, Ester recalled how her understanding of racism evolved from childhood to young adulthood.
“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 AP. “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.”
Ester said she attended mass meetings and picketed daily during the strike.
“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.”