“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 the content of their character…” Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963.

In his speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, Dr. King evoked the name of a great American, Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Albert F. Spencer was an undergraduate college student when Dr. King organized the massive Freedom March in Washington, D.C. Similar to many women and men of the “Baby Boom” generation, he has vivid memories of Martin, Robert and John and their call to social justice. However, since 1980 and the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Albert F. Spencer believes that the political party that best supports social justice is once again that of Abraham Lincoln’s GOP, the Republican Party.

• It has been 50 years since the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education and yet the educational system in the Fifth Congressional District of South Carolina remains sub-standard in far too many situations
• Housing and economic opportunity also remain sub-standard in too many instances
• 30% of the citizens of this district are African-American and yet over 50% of the prison inmates are also African-American

Early in his teaching career, Dr. Albert F. Spencer taught at Atlanta University, a historically black institution of higher education. He also taught at Emory University in the same community and witnessed first hand the discrepancy in such critical areas as library funding and building maintenance.

As a supervisor of student teachers, Dr. Spencer is able to visit many of the schools in Cherokee County. While many of these schools enjoy good educational environments, he has learned from many of his college students from nearby counties, that not all of the schools and classrooms throughout the Fifth Congressional District are equal in being able to provide a quality education. For further information, Dr. Spencer highly recommends Author Pat Conroy’s “The Water is Wide” in order to gain a better understanding of man’s inhumanity to man as witnessed in America’s education of it’s children.

It costs nearly $50,000 a year to care for our nation’s prisoners. Albert Spencer recently stated “Wouldn’t it be far more compassionate—and less costly—to educate individuals rather than to incarcerate them? If we can pay for prison care, we can afford to pay for education!”

Albert F. Spencer has considerable experience in working with American Indians to improve their lives. Early in his teaching career, he worked with students from over twenty American Indian tribal communities and undoubtedly learned as much, if not more, from them as they did from him. Upon moving to South Carolina, he was greatly pleased to learn that individuals from the Catawba and Cherokee nations, as well as other great nations, are represented in the Fifth Congressional District.