Elizabeth Warren is receiving widespread praise for her speech on Sunday as she voice her support behind the Black Lives Matter movement and called for reform on a number of issues plaguing the black community.

As the Massachusetts senator took the podium at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston, she gave respect to the legacy of her senatorial predecessor, Ted Kennedy, who was an enormous ally and advocate of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

"A half-century ago, when Senator Kennedy spoke of the Civil Rights Act, entrenched, racist power did everything it could to sustain oppression of African-Americans, and violence was its first tool," Sen. Warren said, according to her prepared remarks.

Warren looked back at America's dark history of racial violence, conjuring images of lynchings and church bombings. Fifty years later, she said, that violence is still apparent.

"We've seen sickening videos of unarmed, black Americans cut down by bullets, choked to death while gasping for air -- their lives ended by those who are sworn to protect them. Peaceful, unarmed protesters have been beaten. Journalists have been jailed. And, in some cities, white vigilantes with weapons freely walk the streets," Warren said.

Warren, who is a vocal advocate of financial reform and a champion of the middle class, also acknowledged the huge economic disparity between blacks and whites in America. She said, "Economic justice is not -- and has never been --- sufficient to ensure racial justice." She added that discriminatory housing practices and former President Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economic theory were to blame for the ever-increasing wage gap.

She also pointed out numerous attempts by conservatives to cut blacks from the political process, methods that drew ugly parallels to a time when racist tactics were used to prevent blacks their right to vote.

"This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be," Warren said. "It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter."

The speech has cemented Warren as one of the strongest advocates for racial justice among Democrats today. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., agreed to meet with representatives of the Black Lives Movement, but only in the aftermath of a controversial protest in which protesters drowned out the senator at a campaign event.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton also held a conversation with protesters, in which she defended policies enacted by her husband while he was in office -- policies criticized by the Black Lives Movement as discriminatory. She argued that their movement would not succeed in changing deep-seated racism.