e promised land. 

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.

She left Memphis to work elsewhere that summer, and as soon as she finished school, she left for good.

 It's just too much to ... it hurt me that it happened, but it hurt me that it happened in my hometown, that that's the legacy for this city,  she said.

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.

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.

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.

 Thank you, Clara Ester, for a life well lived and for loving me. It changed me,  he wrote.  Clara 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. 

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Former Associated Press reporter Adrian Sainz contributed from Memphis.

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This story corrects the age of Ester when King was killed.