Stephon Ferguson doesn’t really look like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And in normal conversation, the Georgia Perimeter theatre student doesn’t sound like King either.

But listen to Ferguson recite King’s speeches and sermons, and something changes in his demeanor—and his voice. Instantly, you’re transported back in time to the front steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. when King gave his famous “I Have a Dream,” speech to thousands.

Ferguson regularly uses his talents at The King Center in Atlanta as a National Park Service interpreter and volunteer. Since 2005, he has been licensed and certified by the King Estate to perform King’s works. Also, like King, Ferguson is a Baptist minister; he serves as a pastor at Greater Piney Grove Baptist Church in East Atlanta.

On Wednesday, Jan. 21, at 5 p.m. on the Clarkston Campus, Ferguson will recite the speech King gave during his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize speech during an outdoor candlelight vigil for peace.

Ferguson says he found his “voice” as King almost by accident.

An Army veteran, he was working as a DJ creating an acoustic mix recording when he stumbled upon a recording of MLK’s speeches. “They were my mom’s records, and I starting mixing MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ words into the music,” Ferguson recalls. “I started emulating his voice, and my roommate heard me. He couldn’t believe that I wasn’t the record and told me I should consider learning more of (MLK’s) work.”

He took his roommate’s advice, and began memorizing King’s speeches and sermons. Ferguson’s first official appearance reciting King’s works was in 2003, during the groundbreaking of a MLK memorial park in his hometown of Fayetteville, N.C.

Since that time, he has recited many of King’s famous works, traveling throughout the South to speak at key civil rights anniversaries at cities from Georgia to Washington, D.C.

He has appeared in Chicago as a guest of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. during the annual Rainbow PUSH coalition meeting. For the past few years, he has traveled to Selma, Ala., as a regular speaker at that city’s annual event commemorating the voting rights march to Montgomery. (The 50^th anniversary of that famous march is this March.)

Ferguson was born in 1968, the year King was assassinated. He never knew King, he notes. But he says a perk of all these appearances has been to meet Civil Rights leaders, including Jackson, U.S. Congressman John Lewis and the comedian Dick Gregory.

“The Rev. Jesse Jackson thought I was a recording. And Dick Gregory told me that ‘half of all people alive today were not even born’ when the (“I Have a Dream” speech) was done. He told me, ‘when they hear you, it’s like hearing Martin Luther King Jr. for the first time.’”