He was a man: the death of Martin Luther King Jnr, in the witnesses’ words, 50 years on

Clara Ester’s eyes were fixed on the Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr as he stood on the concrete balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

King was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike, and Ester, a college student, had been marching alongside the strikers as they sought better pay and working conditions. She and some friends had gone to the motel for a catfish dinner when she saw King chatting happily, not far from where she stood.

Then Ester heard the shot. It was 6.01pm on April 4, 1968.

“I’m still looking at him,” Ester recalled. “He looked like he was lifted up and thrown back on the pavement. Next thing I remember, I was stepping over his body, and I’m noticing that he’s struggling for air.”

King’s death changed the world and altered the lives of those who lived through it. Some would spend the rest of their lives fighting for racial equality and economic justice. Others, including Ester, would struggle to come to terms with what they saw.

‘It was the happiest I had seen him in a long time’

King had won victories on desegregation and voting rights and had been planning his Poor People’s Campaign when he turned his attention to Memphis, the gritty city by the Mississippi River.