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Al Sharpton attends a special screening of "Fences", at Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall, on Monday, Dec. 19, 2016, in New York.(Photo: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

As part of Black History Month, activist Al Sharpton spoke in Memphis Sunday, delivering a talk that was equal parts sermon, civil-rights history and screed against Donald Trump.

Sharpton spoke for about 45 minutes late Sunday morning to a packed sanctuary atMississippi Boulevard Christian Church, following a sermon at the church's Southeast Memphis campus earlier that morning. The church's senior pastor, Lawrence Turner, is on the board of directors of Sharpton's National Action Network.

It didn't take Sharpton long to attack"Hurricane Trump," as he labeled him early on.

"A lot of you who thought everything was cool, Hurricane Trump has come," Sharpton said. "The fact of the matter is, we've seen people like Trump before.We've seen this before."

Sharpton told the crowd that Trump reached out to him after the election, but Sharptonsaid he refused a meeting: "I'm not interested in a red carpet photo op for him."

A lot of you who thought everything was cool, Hurricane Trump has come. The fact of the matter is, we've seen people like Trump before. We've seen this before.

Sharptoncompared Trump to former President Richard Nixon, who was elected in 1968 but resigned in 1974 after the Watergate scandal erupted.

"It was a dark day, but we got through Richard Nixon," he said beforecomparingTrump toNixon's successors as Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. "We got through all of that."

Sharpton also spent part of his talk discussing Memphis's legacy in the civil-rights movement, particularly the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the former Lorraine Motel Downtown.

"When I think of Memphis, I don't think of Graceland.I think of the (National) Civil Rights Museum and the Lorraine Motel," Sharpton said, recounting a conversation he said he had with a man on the plane to Memphis Saturday.

Sharpton said that he was a teenagerwhen King was killed, and he didn't quite understand why his mother was so upset.

"You're weeping like it was a member of our family," Sharpton said he told his mother. "She said, You'd have to have been born and raised in the South. Made to sit in the back of the bus but paid the same fare to understand who Dr. King was. You'd have had to have been thirsty and told you couldn't drink from the water fountain. Hungry and told you couldn't eat at the restaurant.' She said, 'You don't know what we've been through. We fought so your generation wouldn't have to go through this.'"

Sharpton then indicated his beliefthat the struggles of the past will make those of the future easier to handle.

"Y'all seem to be easily rattled," he said, "'cause some of you forget where we come from and how we got here."

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Al Sharpton speaks at Memphis church for Black History Month - The Commercial Appeal