Alabama State Rep.: ‘Every Confederate Statue and Flag Literally Represents the Oppression of Black People’

EXCERPT:

SANDERS: “First, this bill really started out with just protecting monuments that are 50 years old. And if you go back 50 years, when the bill was first introduced in 2015, that was the time of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. So they were trying to protect monuments that were established before 1965. Not all monuments. It grew into that. Second — or third, these — these are statues and names and buildings and bridges and other things of people who not only believed in white supremacy but they also believed in slavery and who fought to keep people in slavery. They are messages to our children that these are people we should emulate, these are people we should be like. Imagine having black children having to go to school here in Montgomery, Alabama, in a school named after Jeff Davis who did everything that he possibly could to keep black people enslaved. Or Robert E. Lee, who was the lead general for the Confederates in the war, imagine what that does to them psychologically."