HOLYOKE — The theme for this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Breakfast in Holyoke — “unselfish love” — is one that the late pastor and civil rights icon would likely would have strongly supported.

Gina Nelson, president of the Council of Human Understanding, which organized the breakfast held last Friday, told the roughly 100 people gathered to mark MLK’s 94th birthday on Monday, that love was the only way to conquer hate, especially in an age rife with internal divisions within the nation.

“We have to speak louder with love than those voices and actions that we’re speaking in hate,” Nelson said. “All that we can do is do the best that we can in our little corner of the world and pray that the ripple effect of that love goes beyond where we are.”

Nelson also played a clip from an upcoming documentary film “A Case for Love,” featuring the teachings of Michael Curry, the current presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church who is most famous for presiding over the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

“We will either live together as brothers and sisters, or we will die together as fools,” Curry says in the video, amid footage being shown of news reports on racist attacks and violence at several demonstrations. “We were made for each other, and I believe we were also made for the God who made us.”

Theresa Temple, a pastor at the First Baptist Church in Holyoke, served as a guest speaker for the event. Growing up near Richmond, Virginia, during a time when segregation was still the law of the land in the state, Temple later moved to Connecticut and then to Massachusetts, where she now serves as a pastor for her congregation.

“The church was predominantly white, so at first it was a novelty — a Black pastor in a white church. I get that,” she said. “But my thought process is, I don’t pastor a white congregation. I pastor a congregation.”

Growing up in Virginia, Temple lived in an area called Fulton, with other African Americans, while the white people in the neighborhood lived in a section called Fulton Hills. As a child, she would often play with the white children of Fulton Hills during the day, but always knew to be back home before dark.

“You realized even at that time of growing up. It didn’t faze you or anything, it was just the way it was,” she said.

“But my grandmother always said, ‘You treat people the way you want to be treated, and don’t let hatred flow in your heart.’ ”

Temple also drew from the late Dr. King’s life to provide lessons for today’s society. Temple remarked that King was a man who questioned the social injustices of his time, who worked to expand his knowledge and education, and used that knowledge and his innate gift of oratory to help others.

“His destiny was being built by the things he saw, by the surroundings that he was in, his destiny was being built by the house he was raised up out of,” Temple said. “So in today’s time as we look at your destiny being thrust upon the young people in your lives, their destiny has been set for them, but it depends on the surroundings that they are in.”

Following Temple’s speech, attendees joined hands to sing “We Shall Overcome,” assisted by the Bethlehem Baptist Community Choir, who also performed several other gospel songs during the breakfast.

Since its inception in 1983, the Council for Human Understanding has hosted a breakfast in honor of King’s memory on the Friday before his birthday. In addition to Nelson as its president, other board members include Holyoke state Rep. Patricia Duffy, Holyoke Media news director Natalia Muñoz and the Holyoke Director of Planning & Economic Development Aaron Vega.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.