# Speech on American Slavery, the Civil War and Confederate Monuments - Original post: https://www.twitter.com/i/status/2116472970357211196 - Source account: [@dijoni](https://x.com/dijoni) - Source language: English - Duration: 5:26 - Published: 2026-11-01 - Canonical URL: https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments ## Transcript [0:00](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments) Son of the South. Great, great. Our blood is in the soil. [0:05](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=5) So let me say this, and I wanna be really clear as we are dismissive, and I am actually flabbergasted at the celebrated ignorance of your own history with the level of dismissal and disdain. [0:21](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=21) It is shocking, and we should all be embarrassed for every person in this body that considers themself a statesman or a stateswoman or a student of history. [0:33](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=33) Let me tell you something. If you have read American history and you have read the Bible, you would understand that there is no history of slavery like American slavery. [0:47](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=47) American slavery is what we call chattel slavery. [0:53](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=53) Chattel slavery, to anybody who might be wondering, did not exist in the Bible because you know what slaves in the Bible were? [1:02](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=62) People, human beings, indentured servants, forced laborers. They were not, in essence, property to be murdered, raped, sold, stolen, and declared in the Constitution three-fifths of a human being. [1:32](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=92) So let me be really clear. The Civil War was fought over slavery. [1:38](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=98) The people who we are memorializing in these Confederate monuments went to war with their own countrymen over slavery, over the right to own another person, to force women to have babies and breed, to buck break Black men. [2:01](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=121) We will not in this moment, and I know we're getting close to the end, and we get a little squirrely, but what we will not do is skate past the history of my ancestors, my history in this country. [2:15](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=135) A people stolen from across the ocean, many of whom chose the sea rather than to become property of the folks that you seek to defend and memorialize and create litigation avenues to. [2:31](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=151) It is a sad, sad day in this chamber. These remarks were inexcusable. [2:39](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=159) We should all be saddened and ashamed of ourselves as we continue to try to limit teaching history. Why? [2:48](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=168) Because we wanna get away with rewriting it. [2:53](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=173) We're not talking about a war. We're talking about centuries of mass murder. [3:06](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=186) That is my granddaughter's story of the South, and let me say this 'cause I'm gonna pivot real quick 'cause I only have a minute. [3:13](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=193) The notion that we have not even considered the constitutionality of making standing so flimsy that anybody could wake up in the morning and decide they wanna sue. [3:32](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=212) That's not how the Constitution works. If you're a lawyer in this, in this chamber, you know that is not how standing works. [3:40](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=220) You have to have an injury in fact, not one in your imagination, not a preference, an injury, a constitutional one, concrete, that allows you to invoke the authority of the judicial branch. [3:58](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=238) This is an awful sad day. We could have done a lot of things. [4:01](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=241) We could have required that these monuments be placed where they belong, and that is in a museum to be studied like every other civilized country does. [4:12](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=252) But we are still waging wars with the ghosts of a past and a war that was lost. [4:20](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=260) Lost for the purpose of treating men and women and babies as human beings. [4:27](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=267) And you will not in my face, in the faces of my brothers and sisters and countrymen and children of the South, pretend like what happened down here was biblical and of God. [4:45](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=285) It is a disgrace. [4:50](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=290) I'm going to ask my colleagues to reflect deeply on what just happened from this well today, just feet away from me. [5:01](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=301) I'm glad my grandmother is not alive in twenty twenty-six to hear what came from this well moments ago. [5:09](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=309) Now, y'all are gonna pass this bill because you're gonna do what you do. [5:13](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=313) But let me tell you something else. We'll see you in court. [5:18](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/4nceoBaNNQGx/en/speech-on-american-slavery-the-civil-war-and-confederate-monuments?t=318) Mr. Speaker