General Robert E. Lee was his ancestor. Today, Reverend Robert W. Lee IV wants the Confederate monuments taken down.
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00:00To persons of color in the community, I can't express how sorry I am that my ancestry has somehow brought this about.
00:11I am the great-great-great-great-nephew of Robert Edward Lee, who was the general of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
00:19For me, personally, it's time for the statues to come down.
00:37These statues were not put up to celebrate a man. They were put up to celebrate a movement, a movement of hate, a movement of racism, a movement that was violent and bloody.
00:48My message to the white supremacists is that I think that the God they are worshiping is an idol.
00:59They're worshiping the God of their own selves instead of the God who created them.
01:03Because the God I have come to know as a pastor and as a minister to the people has been one that would welcome all and would celebrate the diversity they're in.
01:15We can respond to the violence, to the devastation in Charlottesville with a moment of clarity.
01:22And it's my hope that elected leaders, that pastors, that civic organizations stand up and take this moment for the sake of our future and for the sake of our children and for the sake of our grandchildren.
01:32We can't change our history. We can only change our future.
01:34And part of that future means going into the future without these statues as commemorative, but instead as educational for a history that we can never repeat.