PORTLAND (AP) – 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.

At the NAACP’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast, 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.

Following 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 recently discovered 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.”

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On the Net:

Bowdoin College: www.bowdoin.edu

AP-ES-01-16-06 1253EST