For nearly two decades, Bates College in Lewiston has celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day with vigor, recognizing its roots as a school that was founded by abolitionists, welcomed former slaves among its first students, and graduated one of the civil rights leader’s closest advisers.

Classes are suspended Monday, capping off a long weekend of special events, including a student debate honoring the Rev. Benjamin Mays, a 1920 Bates graduate who became president of Morehouse College and was a significant mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

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MLK DAY EVENTS

BRUNSWICK: Bowdoin College will present a free Children’s Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. from 10:30 a.m. to noon in Daggett Lounge at Thorne Hall, off College Street. The program features music, storytelling, crafts and refreshments. Sweet Honey in the Rock founder Bernice Johnson Reagon and her daughter, Toshi Reagon, will perform at 7:30 p.m. in the Pickard Theater at Memorial Hall. Tickets are $10 for Bowdoin Friends and $25 for the general public. Call 725-3375 for more information.

LEWISTON: Bates College events start with a keynote address by Peniel E. Joseph, a Tufts University professor who is an authority on the black power movement. He will speak at 9 a.m. Monday at Gomes Chapel on “Reimagining Martin Luther King Jr. in the Age of Obama and the Age of Ferguson.” The black student group Sankofa will perform at 7:30 p.m. at Schaeffer Theatre. The events are free but may require tickets. Visit www.bates.edu/mlk for a full schedule or call 786-6400 for more information.

ORONO: The Greater Bangor Area NAACP and the University of Maine will host the annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast at 8 a.m. at the university’s Wells Conference Center. Keynote speakers Esther Attean and Denise Altvater, advisers to the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission, will address the topic “Truth, Healing and Change: Maine-Wabanaki Reconciliation.” Tickets at the door are $20 for adults; $12.50 for children age 12 and under; and free for students with a MaineCard. Call 581-4095 for more information.

PORTLAND: The 34th annual MLK Holiday Breakfast Celebration will be held from 8 to 11 a.m. Monday at the Holiday Inn by the Bay. Former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who lives in Ogunquit, will be the keynote speaker. The program will recognize the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its theme will be “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest,” taken from the lyrics of “Ella’s Song,” written by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Tickets are $35 each and are available at the door.

RICHMOND: Southard House Museum, 75 Main St., will host a lecture, “From Slavery to Maine,” at 2 p.m. Candace Kanes, curator of the Maine Historical Society’s Memory Network, will discuss the hundreds of former slaves who came to Maine in the last years of the Civil War and immediately afterward. She will explain how they got here and what their experiences were like. A reception will follow the program.

WATERVILLE: The Waterville Rotary Club and Spectrum Generations will host the 29th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day community breakfast from 7:30 to 9 a.m. at the Muskie Community Center, 38 Gold St. Richard Biffle, an education professor at Thomas College, will speak on the pursuit of unpopular ideas in challenging and changing times. Tickets are $7 for adults and $3 for children under age 13. Call Spectrum Generations at 873-4745 for information. Colby College will host Peabody Award-winning broadcaster Majora Carter as the keynote speaker for its MLK Day program at 7 p.m. in Ostrove Auditorium in the Diamond Building.

Frost paintings part of MLK Day observances at Bates

This year, the college’s social justice heritage and ties to King have taken on greater importance following controversial police killings of black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, that have stirred racial tensions across the nation.

“We’re giving space to conversations that need to be had,” said Annakay Wright, a sophomore who helped to plan the college’s MLK Day program and who is co-director of Sankofa, a performance art group founded by black students.

Wright also organized a student “die-in” Dec. 2, when demonstrators lay on the floor of the Commons to represent black lives lost to violence across the country, including Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin.

The die-in sparked intense conversations among students, Wright said, which she hopes will continue during 20 workshops and other events scheduled Monday under the theme “From Selma to Ferguson: 50 Years of Nonviolent Dissent.” The title refers to protest marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, when demonstrators were attacked by state troopers. The protests prompted Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“We felt there wasn’t enough discussion on campus about what’s going on,” said Wright, who is from Brooklyn, New York. “That’s why Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year is very important. We live in a time when some people still are not safe. We need to appreciate the work that others have accomplished but realize that there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

PROTEST ADVICE FROM BATES GRAD

Mays played a critical role in the civil rights movement, tapping King to enroll at Morehouse College in Atlanta when he was just 15 years old. King earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at the all-male, historically black college.

Mays, who was president of Morehouse from 1940 to 1967, was a civil rights leader in his own right, preaching the evils of segregation and lynching, promoting nonviolent protest after meeting with Mohandas K. Gandhi in 1936, and serving as an adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

While King was at Morehouse in the late 1940s, Mays encouraged him to pursue a graduate education, telling him how to prepare, what to expect and how to stay committed. King went on to get a bachelor’s degree in divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and a doctorate in systemic theology from Boston University.

“(Mays) was overtly serving the role as mentor to Martin Luther King from the beginning,” said James Reese, associate dean of students at Bates College. Reese has studied Mays’ career and spent time with him when he returned for reunions in the early 1980s.

When King became the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which led many important protests in the civil rights movement, Mays continued to be an adviser and a sounding board.

“King would call on Mays for advice and to discuss approaches to protests, so that bond was even stronger than the mentor role he had during King’s college years,” Reese said.

PRAISE FOR KING’S COURAGE, FAITH

Following King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, at age 39, Mays delivered a final eulogy on April 9 before an estimated 150,000 mourners on the Morehouse campus. After the funeral service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, King’s mahogany coffin was carried to the college in an old farm wagon pulled by two mules.

Mays, who was 70 and had recently retired, described King as “more courageous than those who advocate violence as a way out.”

“Martin Luther faced the dogs, the police, jail, heavy criticism, and finally death, and he never carried a gun, not even a knife, to defend himself,” Mays said. “He had only his faith in a just God to rely on.”

The two men had agreed that one would eulogize the other, whoever died first, though the elder Mays thought it surely would be him. Devastated by the loss of his close friend and ally in the fight for civil rights, he compared eulogizing King to speaking at a son’s funeral.

“So close, so precious, was he to me,” Mays said.

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