While many of our readers will have Monday off from work, we hope that everyone, whether at home or in the office, takes pause to remember why we are celebrating.

Monday is the day set aside to honor the life and the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

And while he was a black man, it is far from just a “black” holiday.

The life and work of this great man, and others like him, set the foundation for civil rights in this country.

Many of you are too young to recall, or to have ever seen for that matter, police turning dogs on protesters, or firefighters using their powerful hoses to disperse peaceful civile rights demonstrations.

And the same number of you have probably never heard of the three civil rights workers murdered on a back road in Mississippi in 1964 – although you may have seen the movie “Mississippi Burning.”

There were other sacrifices, including 11-year-old Denise McNair, and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, all killed when a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, Ala., in September 1963.

So many people were a part of the civil rights movement in the 60s, following the non-violent teachings of King.

Today there is a day to honor this great American and the actions of all of those people.

Don’t let this become just another day off from work, or a day for which you earn extra money because you had to work.

Make this a day of remembrance, a day that is set aside to honor all of those who sacrificed so much for freedom, in a country whose very existence is founded on that concept.