'Civil War' documentary producer Ken Burns says Confederate statues should come down

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Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on Tuesday said that Confederate statues should come down because they were put up at a time when white supremacy was being “brutally re-imposed” over the old Confederacy.

Burns made the comments during an appearance on “Cuomo Prime Time” on CNN amid a backdrop of nationwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on CNN.  (CNN)

“I think we’re in the middle of an enormous reckoning right now in which the anxieties and the pains and the torments of injustice are bubbling up to the surface,” the “Civil War” filmmaker said. “It’s very important for people like me, of my complexion, to it be as quiet as possible and to listen. What I know from my reading of history is that the confederate monuments have to go.”

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Burns pointed out that the statues were put up in the decades after the Civil War as a backlash to the progress being made by African-Americans.

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“They’re an attempt to rewrite history and to essentially celebrate a false narrative about what happened during the Civil War and to send the wink-winks, the dog whistles, as we’re fond of saying today, across the generations of what the Civil War was about,” Burns said. “It’s so interesting we’re having this having this argument because the people that we people who responsible for the deaths of — yes. These are people responsible for the deaths of the loyal American citizens.”