MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY
Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A Civil Rights activist looks back on her work during the Civil Rights Movement and her encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr.
by Clara Ester, Deaconess
I used to tell people that I grew up in a black world. Our parents protected us from racism and segregation. But when I was seven, we went to Knoxville to see relatives. On the way, we were going to Lookout Mountain by train. My dad worked for the railroad, so we got to go on trips by train. We were in a train station, waiting. Nobody else was there, and we used the bathrooms and water fountains. And then the shift changed and the workers came. My mother could pass for white because she was Choctaw, but when one of the workers saw us, the man started scolding my mother, wagging his finger and saying, “You know better than that.”
I’d never seen anybody talk to my mother like that. My dad didn’t talk to my mother like that. That’s when I started to see the injustices.
Read Clara Ester’s full story…it is a powerful, inspiring story by an amazing woman!
Deaconess Clara Ester retired in December 2006 as executive director of Dumas Wesley Community Center, a United Methodist Women-supported national mission institution, located in the Crichton neighborhood of Mobile, Ala.
