"From age five to 17, I spent approximately four thousand days in the Chicago foster care system. I lived in over a dozen different homes -- many of them before I started high school. Although there were so many families whose kindness saved my life and whom I can never thank enough, it was still a tough decade.

​

When I was 17, shortly after leaving foster care, I became homeless for four months. The challenges of being a homeless teen are indescribable -- but I have a role model whose inspiration means a lot to me: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His words are a testament that even I could have a dream, and make it a reality."

​

from Walker's HuffPost Black Voices Column, entitled: From Foster Care to Yale: Why Doctor King Mattered to Me