Mainers recognized Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday with speeches, discussions and remembrances for the slain civil rights leader who worked toward racial equality in America.

Gov. John Baldacci, speaking at the NAACP’s Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in the University of Maine in Orono, noted Monday that King’s life and legacy taught that “what we share in our values and convictions can overcome injustice and intolerance.”

Baldacci said that there inevitably would be those who fear change and the emergence of different cultures.

“But diversity only strengthens what we have in common,” he stated. ” It is the commonalities that matter most and endure. We all want safety, opportunity and good health for our families.”

The theme for the event, attended by several hundred people, according to a university official, was “Live the Dream,” in reference to King’s most famous speech.

The holiday was observed by UM, and no classes were held as students returned from vacation and prepared to start the second semester today.

“For our students particularly, we expect them to be leaders amongst leaders,” UM Dean of Students Robert Dana said in a phone interview after Monday’s breakfast. “We want them stepping up. This is part of their responsibility as citizens of the state.”

Remembering King’s work also is important because it reminds people not to be indifferent when it comes to discrimination, Dana noted.

“If indeed we’re complacent and not responding as individuals to acts of injustice, then all of a sudden injustice will be everywhere, and all of us will be both victims and part of the conspiracy,” Dana said. “We have to push it back to make this a kind, caring, and compassionate community.”

For the first time to honor the day, the Peace and Justice Center and the Bangor Y presented a Martin Luther King Jr. story hour for two groups of children in Bangor.

About 23 youngsters attended the afternoon session at the YMCA. Sitting on the floor in a circle, they were given the opportunity to talk about what would make the world a better place.

“Not beat up my little brother,” one little boy said.

“Treat people all the same,” another boy said.

The children listened to Jan Silbury and Katie Greenman, both center volunteers, who read books about King and the civil rights movement.

The presentation was important, Silbury said, to let children know that there was such a person as King.

“We want to reinforce that there are peaceful ways to handle controversy,” Silbury said.

Schools, local municipalities, banks, and state and federal offices around the state were closed for the day.

At the NAACP’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast in Portland, keynote speaker Victor Bolden, general counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, said there is still racial inequality in America decades after King’s death.

It is important, he said, for Americans to remember King’s work of the past to overcome challenges in the future to eliminate inequality.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who also spoke at the breakfast, said King is remembered as the father of the modern civil rights movement, as an innovator of nonviolent protest, as a scholar and as a man of faith.

“Today we are gathered to celebrate all of those attributes that combined to create a celebrated ‘conscience of a nation’ – that to this day provides us all with a lens through which to view our own action, our own national character,” Snowe said.

After the breakfast, participants marched to Monument Square for a wreath-laying ceremony.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on Jan. 15, 1929. He was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968.

The federal Martin Luther King holiday falls on the third Monday of each January.

King drew international attention with his work and philosophy of nonviolent protest, and for his “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 march on Washington. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

In the spring of 1964, King was invited to speak at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, where he addressed a crowd of about 1,100 people about the civil rights movement and the importance of ending discrimination in America.

King’s speech was recorded by Bowdoin’s radio station, WBOR, but was misplaced and missing for many years until it was discovered recently by Bowdoin Library’s processing archivist, who had the tape transferred to CD and transcribed.

Bowdoin has permission from the King Center, which holds the copyright to the speech, to make King’s address available online in conjunction with occasions such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month.

Frederick Stoddard, who was a Bowdoin senior in 1964 and is now a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said King’s speech touched him on a personal level.

“At the time, and continuing today, it strengthened my commitment to advocacy for blacks, other minorities and children,” he said. “Most importantly, it was inspirational in helping me realize the importance of advocacy for what one believes in.”