Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey's newest campaign ad defending a state law that protects Confederate monuments is a reminder to black residents "where Alabama stands when it comes to race relations," the Alabama NAACP said in a fiery response.

The organization's president, Bernard Simelton, said the NAACP was "shocked" at the campaign ad, and chastised the governor for not wanting to meet with them to discuss race relations.

"Just when we thought Alabama was beginning to turn the corner in race relations, we see our governor wanting to continue to remind African Americans and people of color where Alabama stands when it comes to race relations," Simelton said in an email statement to AL.com. "Not on her watch will Alabama move to be a more inclusive state."

Ivey's campaign, in a response, defended the ad that was released Tuesday and the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017, which Ivey signed into law about 11 months ago.

"Our ad highlights a law that was passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor to protect all of our historical monuments. We can't - and we shouldn't - change, erase, or tear down our history. We should learn from all of it," the campaign issued in a response.

Simelton said Ivey's office has ignored the NAACP's requests for meetings to discuss the formation of a commission or a panel to study race relations in Alabama.

"The request hit a brick wall," said Simelton. "We also asked her to make a public statement that KKK, Neo Nazi's, and other white supremacists groups are not welcomed in Alabama. It met the same brick wall."

Said Simelton: "The numerous issues that Ivey could have included in her ad, such as better education system, improved health care, reduction of crime, a fairer criminal justice system and she chose the one thing that divides Alabamians perhaps more than anything else ... the Confederate monuments that is a reminder of a very dark past."

Ivey's campaign ad touts a law that requires local governments to obtain state permission before altering or renaming historically significant buildings and monuments that date back 40 years or longer. The law also creates a 11-member commission which is charged with determining whether historic buildings or monuments can be moved or renamed.

Ivey, in her campaign ad, criticized Alabama outsiders for pushing an agenda on the state. "Up in Washington, they always know better," Ivey said at the beginning of the clip. "Politically correct nonsense, I say."

But the most prominent fight in Alabama hasn't been with outsiders, rather with the City of Birmingham.

The law is subject to recent litigation in Jefferson County Circuit Court, where the city of Birmingham is pitted against the Alabama Attorney General's Office. In August 2017, two months after the law was passed, then-Birmingham Mayor William Bell ordered the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Linn Park covered with plastic - later, plywood - while lawyers could explore legal options.

Bell said at the time he wasn't going to have the statue torn down, even though there were calls for its removal.

The debate over the fate of Confederate monuments has exploded nationally since the 2015 massacre inside a Charleston, South Carolina church. A rash of monuments have either been removed or torn down in the past couple of years highlighted last year by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu's decision to remove a Robert E. Lee statue.