BANGOR, Maine — In the past few years Bradley resident Sara Gifford has learned a little bit about civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. through her school classes, first in Bradley and now as a fifth-grader at Old Town Elementary School.
The lesson she learned Monday afternoon during the University of Maine’s first Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, held at the Bangor Mall, was one surely King would have extolled in his teachings.
“I have brown hair, and someone else can be blond, but we both like dogs. It doesn’t matter,” said the brunette from Bradley, citing an example she picked up Monday. “Diversity means different people come together. It shouldn’t be all black and white. Different people can come together in peace.”
Kristen Sutherland, a graduate assistant at UMaine’s Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism, said the Bodwell Center and the Office of Multicultural Programs worked together to come up with a program that would help children understand King’s teachings and provide some entertainment on a day off from school.
Sutherland said the organizers contacted local schools before the event to encourage participation. Sara Gifford was one of nearly 30 children from schools in Bangor, Brewer, Milo, Orono, Old Town, and Brownville who attended the event despite Monday’s snowy weather.
Sara’s mother, Andrea Gifford of Bradley, said she wanted her daughter to understand the importance of the day.
“This is a great opportunity for them to be educated about why they have the day off and spend some time learning about diversity and embracing difference,” she said.
Volunteers from the University of Maine, including several members of UMaine sports teams, helped run the event, which was made up of four activity stations with different lessons about diversity. Students were grouped together and spent about 30 minutes at each station.
At one station, UMaine professor John Bear Mitchell, associate director of UMaine’s Wabanaki Center and a member of the Penobscot Nation, told traditional Wabanaki stories. One such story, meant as a metaphor for diversity and freedom, was about a Wabanaki girl who decided to try the wings of different birds in order to find a comfortable place for herself in the tribe.
“She realized that she had the freedom to try on all these different wings because her people allowed her to do that,” Mitchell said to a group of adults and children sitting around him. “That’s kind of like what Martin Luther King did, right? He did a lot of fighting and a lot of talking trying to get people to understand that no matter what color you are, you have the ability to try on different wings and be who you are.”
UMaine student-athletes led youngsters through physical activities, such as getting untangled from a human knot of arms and legs, meant to foster teamwork.
“We’re hoping they would get more comfortable with communication and working with people in a group,” said field hockey player Maire Dineen, a junior from Toronto who organized the student-athletes’ station. “At the beginning of the day we saw kids sticking with the people they knew, but now there’s a lot of interaction with people they met here. It’s about broadening their horizons.”
Other activities included small-group discussions about diversity led by UMaine students and a sculpture station in which youngsters were instructed to express their thoughts through molding clay.
Even though Sara Gifford brought a friend to the event at the mall Monday, she found herself enjoying her interactions with other children whom she didn’t know.
“I kept questioning [the event] and questioning it in my head, about what it was going to be like,” Sara Gifford said of the days leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “But when I picked up my friend I was, like, feeling so excited. I liked doing the different activities and meeting new friends and learning about