Oscars 2019: Best & Worst Moments (Updating) - Hollywood Reporter

BlacKkKlansman director Spike Lee accepted the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, which also marked his first competitive Oscar win. He received a standing ovation from the crowd and gave a powerful speech calling out America's complicated racial history.

"The date: the 24th. The month: February, which happens to be the shortest month of the year, which also happens to be Black History Month," Lee began. "The year is 2019. The year is 1619. ... Four-hundred years our ancestors were stolen from Northern Africa and brought to Jamestown, Virginia, enslaved."

He then spoke of his own experience, growing up in America, calling out his grandmother, who lived to "100 years young" and who graduated college despite the fact that her mother was once a slave. According to Lee, she saved 50 years of Social Security checks to put him through college and film school.

"She called me Spikey Poo," he said, to much laughter.

That's when it got political.

"The 2020 presidential election is around the corner. Let's all mobilize. Let's all be on the right side of history, make the moral choice between love versus hate," Lee finished to ecstatic applause.

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