UNE community gathers to honor MLK’s vision of the ‘Beloved Community’

The familiar refrains of “This Little Light of Mine” filled Girard Innovation Hall on Tuesday, Jan. 21, as Melissa Hue ’15, M.P.H. ’20, shared her journey from a diverse North Carolina neighborhood to director of Portland’s Office of Economic Opportunity. 

The gospel song, the first Hue ever learned, set the tone for the University of New England’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration.

The annual event is held in honor of King’s historic 1964 visit to St. Francis College, the precursor to UNE’s Biddeford Campus, and his enduring call for justice, dignity, and mutual responsibility. This year’s celebration embodied the theme of “Public Health and MLK’s Beloved Community.”

Alumni speaker Hue delivered an impassioned keynote on building community in challenging times to over 150 attendees on the Portland Campus for the Health Sciences and livestream viewers in the Ripich Commons on UNE’s Biddeford Campus.

Hue wove together her childhood in Greensboro, North Carolina, site of the historic 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, with King’s vision of the Beloved Community.

“I believe that to truly understand the call Dr. King made for the Beloved Community, you must first understand hate,” Hue told the crowd. “Hate doesn’t always look like violence or aggression. It can be psychological, emotional, insidious.”

Hue shared vivid memories of her diverse neighborhood — her first Beloved Community — where children played across cultural boundaries, where neighbors looked out for one another, and where her mother, an immigrant who faced discrimination in health care and employment, taught her that “We must live for each other harmoniously, unapologetically, as human beings.”

Hue, whose public health career has included supporting hundreds of uninsured and underinsured Mainers at MaineHealth and serving on the Maine CDC Health Equity Advisory Council, emphasized that technical solutions alone cannot address community needs.

“Every public health framework, every community development strategy, every system we design in the name of progress will fail if we forget that people and connection must come first,” she said. “Community is not something that just happens. It’s something you fight for. It’s something built from light.”

UNE President James Herbert spoke of the University’s deep connection to King’s legacy and its ongoing commitment to inclusion and belonging.

“It literally gives me chills every time I reflect on Dr. King’s visit to campus,” Herbert said, noting that King’s 1964 talk occurred less than a year after his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and marked his only trip to Maine. “He challenged the students and others he met that day to consider how they could be agents of change in their home communities.”

Herbert emphasized that UNE’s commitment to inclusivity predates King’s visit, with St. Francis College, founded to serve the children of French-speaking Canadian immigrants, and Westbrook Seminary, UNE’s precursor in Portland, established as a co-educational institution in 1831, when few colleges admitted women.

“It’s our privilege to carry forth the foundational values of our institution,” he said. “We believe UNE must reflect a strong spirit of community across the many dimensions of human difference, and we strive to nurture a sense of belonging among all students eager to learn and grow with us.”

Following Hue’s keynote address, participants engaged in a service activity designed to put the principles of the Beloved Community into practice. 

Attendees hand wrote cards of encouragement for individuals in Portland who are currently unhoused. The postcards, designed by UNE students, will be included in snack bags to be assembled by UNE students at a special service event on Jan. 27 and delivered by Hope Squad Maine.

A separate group of students from UNE’s Colleges of Dental Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine traveled to local elementary schools to read to schoolchildren and assuage their fears about seeing the dentist or the doctor.

Shannon Zlotkowski, M.Ed., assistant provost for Community and Belonging at UNE, who organized the event with the MLK Planning Committee, reflected on Hue’s message during closing remarks.

“It’s not only a call to action; it’s a call to love, and there’s an incredible amount of vulnerability in that,” Zlotkowski said. “Melissa, your words around being responsible for a fragile community are words that will stick with me.”