Washington (CNN) Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts on Monday spoke about her experience of being "robbed of my hair" and said that "hardship is universal" at a public appearance that comes after the Democratic congresswoman revealed last week that she has alopecia.

"I've been robbed of my hair, I lost my hair, and I was saying to people that's nothing new. Hardship is transcendent, hardship is universal and for the issue of alopecia, of which, there are millions of sufferers, certainly there are many black women. So I've been robbed of my hair, but black women have been robbed of things for a long time," she said in remarks on stage at the 50th anniversary Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Breakfast held at the Boston convention center.

"We were robbed of our men that were lynched, we were robbed of our children, we were separated from at the auction block and on plantations. They tried to rob us of our beauty by criminalizing or violating our bodies, so that's nothing new. It's alright to stand in joy because when you are oppressed and marginalized, we give each other so much instruction about the armor that we need to put on to navigate and to negotiate the world and to do it safely, but joy is a necessary act of resistance as well," she said.

The congresswoman drew cheers from the crowd during the event with members of the audience giving her a standing ovation.

Pressley later tweeted out video of the event, highlighting her statements that "black women have been robbed of things for a long time" and "joy is a necessary act of resistance."

Black women have been robbed of things for a long time, that's nothing new



Robbed of our men who were lynched



Robbed of our children who were stolen from us at the auction block



But we will not be robbed of our joy



Joy is a necessary act of resistance pic.twitter.com/N2YuVPNsSK — Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) January 20, 2020

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