King grew up in the old south, more precisely in Alabama, a state sweltering in the heat of injustice, in the heat of oppression. It is exactly that which led him to march down the shameless streets of Birmingham, and it was the reason behind his incarceration. However, no jail was secure enough to stop this man from dreaming the same dreams and hoping the same hopes. In the letter from Birmingham jail, Dr. King describes how bitter and outraged he was by the conditions to which the Negro living in America was reduced. A letter which is no less than the dissection of the crippled existence of the Negro, the so-called African American, tied to poverty in a country whose prosperity was seemingly growing.

Martin Luther King willingly deprived himself of the security of a material life to adopt that of a nomad. Going from place to place, ringing the bells of freedom, singing the songs of brotherhood, and calling for the coming together of people of all religion, color, race, and ethnicity. He wanted to depose the first brick in the building of a new American society; a society in which people would not be judged by race, color, and religion, but by their contribution to the common good. "I have a dream this day!

I have a dream that my four little children

will one day live in a nation where they will

not be judged by the color of their skin, but by

the content of their character." How can my relationship with Dr. King not become the more personal, when I, a father, am reading the "letter from Birmingham jail", and in the back of my mind, the voice of that little girl (like my little girl Regianie) asking her daddy why she could not go to the park, as if the question was addressed to me, as if she were my own.

How can my relationship with Dr. King not grow even deeper when I look in my past, and find myself engaging in exactly the same kind of nonviolent protest advocated by him? In fact, I am not only an admirer of Dr. King’s writings, but also a student of his teachings. Having migrated to the U.S. from a country (Haiti) racked by political and social turbulence; a country where only less than 5% of the population controls the scarce national resources, where food and schools are privileges afforded to the very lucky, where human rights and respect for human life are ideals without much following, I am able to understand the new social contract he advocates. Furthermore, my relationship with Dr. King became the more imposing when I realized that the new social contract he was advocating did not confine itself to the four corners of America, but embraced the cause of man kind wherever he was oppressed. Indeed, King never negotiated the power of his words or the comfort of his presence wherever they could have made a difference. His call for human rights and social justice was of universal proportion, and his speeches best illustrate this when he says:

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