Draft:Clara Ester

Introduction
Clara Ester is a member of the United Methodist Church who was a major civil rights activist during the time of Martin Luther King Jr. She was inspired heavily by his work for civil equality and spent most of her life fighting for sanitation workers rights as well as working for her church and serving that way.

Biography
Clara Ester was born in Memphis, TN in 1947. She later attended LeMoyne-Owen College in Tennessee. During her time there, she dedicated much of her time and energy to the civil rights movement. After graduating from college, she moved to Mobile, AL to pursue a position as the Neighborhood Organizer at Dumas Wesley Community Center. This was in February of 1970. Dumas Wesley Community Center is a Christian service program that provides for all those in need from children to senior citizens to the homeless population. She continued to serve in this program, slowly working her way up to Program Director, Associate Director, and then eventually Executive Director. She held this position until her retirement in December of 2006. Clara Ester is still alive today and is an active member of the United Methodist Church where she continues to serve in a religious fashion.

Impacts
Clara Ester has dedicated her life to serving those less fortunate than herself. In her youth, this meant being an active participant in the civil rights movement. When Clara was a junior in college, an incident occurred where unsafe working conditions caused two sanitation workers to be crushed to death on their job sights. Clara and many others saw this as a result of racial discrimination as the workers were both people of color and their supervisors were all white men. From that moment forward, Clara became an activist on behalf of the sanitation workers during their strike. She continued to attend college while also attending strike meetings and organizing several rallies and groups on her campus to bring attention to the striking sanitation workers. However, despite all their efforts, the strike was making no progress. Clara had always been taught that the best way to create change is through non-violence. This was an idea pushed by her pastor and further demonstrated by her role model, Martin Luther King Jr. Despite this, Clara was offered a role in a more violent protest on behalf of sanitation workers and her frustration at the lack of change pushed her to agree. The group smashed store windows and caused general chaos throughout Memphis. This angered King as it was exactly what he pushed his followers not to do. Despite the anger directed towards him after the incident, King decided to stay in Memphis and give another speech at the Lorraine Hotel. Clara Ester was at this hotel at the same time, purely by coincidence. She was sitting on a balcony at the Lorraine when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. She witnessed the event firsthand.

Watching the shooting of MLK further pushed Ester to continue a career in service. After graduation college, she was assigned by her church to move to Mobile, AL to work at a community center and attempt to turn around a less fortunate neighborhood. The neighborhood was largely people of color who lived in poverty and the local, white-run community center was of no help. Clara almost single-handedly turned around the neighborhood and the community center as a whole. She completely redid the center and added transitional housing for homeless people. She also went door to door throughout the neighborhood helping people fix and clean up their houses. Some of the houses she worked on were beyond livable when she arrived. She taught children how to be better students and active members of their community. She was also a major activist for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to become a national holiday. Overall, Clara’s 36 years spent working in Mobile changed the city for the better in a huge way.

Conclusion
Clara Ester was and continues to be a major civil rights activist. She, unlike many other people just like her, managed to go unnoticed and unrecognized for her life changing work both with the sanitation workers and in Mobile. She deserves to be recognized and regarded as the hero and warrior she is.