Charlotte, NC — Zianna Oliphant, a young girl from North Carolina, has won national attention after she recently delivered an emotional speech at a Charlotte City Council meeting about the police brutality epidemic in the Black community. In her touch speech, she spoke about how this affects her on a daily basis.“It’s a shame that our fathers and mothers are killed and we can’t see them anymore,” she said with tears coming down her face. “It’s a shame that we have to go to their graveyard and bury them. And we have tears. We shouldn’t have tears. We need our fathers and mothers to be by our side.”
She continued, “I’ve been born and raised in Charlotte. And I never felt this way till now and I can’t stand how we’re treated. We are Black people and we shouldn’t have to feel like this. We shouldn’t have to protest because y’all are treating us wrong. We do this because we need to and have rights.”
Her powerful words were in response to the recent killing of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott, an unarmed African American man from the Charlotte area that was gunned down by local police. Scott died on September 20th as local police officers attempted to serve a warrant to another man who lives in his apartment complex. As officers were passing through the parking lot, they encountered Scott who was exiting his car, and said that he made a threatening move with a gun. The officers then shot and killed Scott.
As angry protesting broke out across the city for several nights, Scott’s family released a statement saying that not only was he unarmed, but that he was just reading a book when the officers encountered him and killed him for no apparent reason.
The incident is under investigation.
Watch Zianna Oliphant’s speech below: