Reverend Al Sharpton gave a fiery speech about the 2020 presidential race in which he said it was time to stop “pitting the old against the young,” and that he preferred older candidates to “anyone imposed on us by new liberals who are progressive on everything but race.”

During an acceptance speech at this weekend’s Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards dinner, Sharpton laid out the stakes for the presidential race, and called for an end to “backbiting and infighting.”

“We are fighting today though The worst form of racism and bigotry that we’ve seen since the 1800s,” Sharpton said, called out President Donald Trump as the quintessential “northern bigot,” and framed this election as a fight against a modernized Jim Crow.

“Jim Crow would tell you to get in the back. James Crow Jr. Esquire would put regulations on the front, and force you to the back,” Sharpton said. “Jim Crow wouldn’t let us vote. James Crow Esquire puts voter ID laws and changes voting sites and cancels registration.”

“This is not just another election, this is where America is at the crossroads,” Sharpton went on to say, “and we must make a decision that they brought us here in 1619, and like the Israelites, we’ve wandered 400 years, 400 years now we’ve crossed the Red Sea with Obama, it’s time to go across the Jordan River to the promised land and stop this backbiting and infighting and jealousy, and come together and win this battle once and for all.”

“Let me warn the caucus that there is an epidemic that has broken out in certain parts of Black America called negro amnesia. where people have forgotten where they come from, and forgot why we put you where you are,” Sharpton said. “We didn’t fight to put you in the C-suites to forget about us, we didn’t fight to put you in office to give you a title, we fought thinking if we would put you somewhere, you would fight as the best of us for the rest of us, and if you are scared to fight, then sit down and shut up and let somebody that’s not scared fight.”

Sharpton went on to say “quit pitting the old against the young, in Africa we went to the elders, we didn’t tell the elders that was old school — I would take our older seniors that know the way better than anybody that’s imposed on us by new liberals who are progressive on everything but race. We’re not looking for better slave masters, we’re looking to be free.”

Watch the clip above, via the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

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