Posted on 07/04/2005 8:34:24 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
Maryville, Blount County (WVLT) - No matter where you go across the south, almost everybody's got an opinion on the rebel flag.
If you remember earlier this month, the Maryville School Board banned the flag from any school related function, but an African American man well known to civil rights issues says that's not right and he's taking his protest to the roadways.
Blount County Bureau Chief Stephen McLamb caught up with him on Thursday.
The Maryville School Board this month banned flying the Confederate flag amid racial tensions but that hasn't stopped H. K. Edgerton, a former NAACP leader, from marching into Maryville with his and he questions what racial tensions?
"Just because you can go get one or two poverty pimps to strut around and try to change people in another direction and try to make you believe all black folks hate the flag, that's not true,” says H. K. Edgerton, North Carolina Heritage Preservation President.
The public display grabbed local attention.
"I noticed a black man walking down Alcoa Highway carrying a carrying a Rebel flag...never seen anything like that in my life,” says Bob Culbertson, who supports the rebel flag at MHS.
And local support in the form of honking horns, hoots and hollers.
"The Rebel flag has always been a big part of the south, they ought to keep it there,” adds Culbertson.
"I think they ought to fly it high and fly it proud,” Says Michael Raines, who also supports flying flag at MHS.
Edgerton calls the board a bunch of scalawags and says it's time for the silent majority to speak out.
"There's a line that gets drawn in the sand. And let me tell you something. It doesn't get drawn any better than what's being done right here in Maryville, Tennessee,” says Edgerton.
The southern heritage activist says blacks and whites in Blount County are family.
Edgerton says by the school board banning the use of the Confederate flag, it not only takes away the students' First Amendment rights but also takes away their heritage.
"And I would love more than anything else to come back to Maryville and see black folks and white folks at Maryville High School football games and all over Blount County flying their flag...the flag of their ancestors,” says Edgerton.
Edgerton says he plans to resume his march to the courthouse in Maryville in the morning where he plans a news conference.
Good. Words.
HK on the move!
I hope he walks right past Wlat's house.
Kweesee history bump...
I wish I could march with him!! I think many of us do... God bless him!! Yes, it's about heritage and not hate. We love HK!
He might want to be careful. Does he know what happened to Martin Luther King when he started talking about a colorblind society and freedom and heritage?
Edgerton is an anomaly!
Sure,one can admire his courage and iconoclasm but please,people,he NO WAY represents anything close to black sentiments on this issue.
Every black person I have ever known,in a school,work,or social setting,has never had anything but scorn for that Confederate Flag.
And thats North and South,liberal and conservative,young and old.
That doesn't mean they are RIGHT.I think many of the white,pro-flag folks are motivated by true love of heritage,not racist hate mongering.I'll take their word on that even though it still makes ME,a Northern bred white guy,uncomfortable.
Yet to pass Edgerton off as someone who represents some below the radar mass of black flag supporters is completely ludicrous.
So......I guess the strategy should be to perpetuate the leftist PC view of this?
Mr. Edgerton is NOT an anomaly if you actually follow SCV/UDC and Southern cultural events. You might be surprised, but if you just follow the MSM, you're not getting the entire story.
There's a lot folks who hate Old Glory, too but I don't hang around them.
Then you have never met any of the 40% of Mississippi black voters who voted to keep the Confederate Battle Banner on the state flag of Mississippi a few years ago.
And just how many black people do you really know? Far less than the number who support the flying of the Confederate flag I'll bet.
"The Rebel flag has always been a big part of the south, they ought to keep it there"
An indictment of public education. The flag has no more historical business flying over Blount Country than it does over Boston Massachusetts. As we discussed on the other thread, Blount County was strongly pro-Union during the war. The county voted by over four to one to stay in the Union.
If they want to embrace their heritage and honor their Unionist forefathers, they should choose another symbol than the flag that their ancestors were so opposed to.
Oh, Lordy! Call an ambulance! There's going to be an apoplexy explosion!
Tell the EMS guys to wear latex gloves....and DON'T tell them they're going to fetch an apoplectic scalawag!
And as someone may have failed to point out to you, the people in Blount County were bound by that vote to secede with the majority of their fellow-citizens, who in the whole, acting as their State, were the sovereign power and were authorized to take the step of secession, and to bind everyone in the State to the will of the whole People thereof.
What a silly statement! What sort of basis of comparison is that? Every person only knows a limited number of people -- what is your point?
he is just one of the million or so black CSA descendants, who has re-discovered their Confederate HERITAGE. (over 100,000 brave, black southerners volunteered & fought VALIANTLY for a FREE dixie republic. to quote Nate Forrest, "better rebels never drew breath!")
every day that passes, more and more black southerners cleave to the Cross of St Andrew & become SOUTHRON, which is quite different than being a southerner.
MANY black, loyal, southron patriots are joining the SCV & UDC. (i wish that EVERY one of them would!)
free dixie,sw
a scalawag is a TURNCOAT to his native state & the southland. scalawags are the lowest form of life.
btw, WP, #3fan, cvn76 & a host of damnyankee EX FReepers are active on DU. (i'd bet you are NOT surprised by that! rotflmRao!)
free dixie, sw
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man"
And that includes tyranny at the state level. There is question about the legitimacy of the Tennessee secession. Secession had already been voted down once in Tennessee and was only ratified after the politicians had invited the Confederate army into the midst of the state. To the everlasting honor of the old Blount County people, they stayed loyal the the old Union despite the sovereign state being overrun with hordes from outside the sovereign state.. It's a shame that current Blount residents seem ignorant of this proud heritage and are willing to unthinkingly embrace a "hooray for Dixie" attitude that would be repugnant to their ancestors.
Heritage not hate, nor ignorance.
One could deduce that in the modern era they (Blount Countians) prefer feeling Southern as opposed to Unionist.
Quite common I've observed all over formerly majority Unionist Central and Southern Appalachia.
I have property in a gentrified area of Appalachia and while driving in those environs I find Southern memorabilia most frequently.
One should remember that the western slope valley that runs basically from Chattanooga TN to Winchester VA and Cumberland MD was quite agricultural and Southern leaning. Those hillsides and knobs throughout the Cumberlands to the west and Appalachians to the east were of course less agricultural and less pro-Southern.
Not unlike Piney Woods red clay areas as well in the Deep South.
The land Scarlett... formed the political view to a degree.....
PS: The only reason this is an issue is actually because Maryville is a bit of a lefty-commie haven near Knoxville. The stink was instigated by them.
So as usual, FR's resident Southern heritage bashers find themselves in the tub with lefty PC toesuckers .
or has he/she met the MANY members of the Black Confederate Soldiers Memorial Assn.
free dixie,sw
nor has he/she met the MANY members of the Black Confederate Soldiers Memorial Assn.
free dixie,sw
damnyankee south-bashers & especially SCALAWAGS make me gag.
free dixie,sw
Great big 'ol bump
I feel Southern too, but feeling Southern is not the same as feeling Confederate. The heritage of East Tennessee is Southern and Unionist. It is true that in the lowlands of this region there was more Confederate sentiment than in the uplands. But still the region as a whole voted over 2 to 1 to remain in the Union even after the Confederate army moved in.
I'm all for descendants of Confederates honoring their heritage if they wish. I understand the difference between flying a Confederate flag over a Confederate memorial and flying it at a Klan rally. But I'm just sad that so many people ignorantly dishonor their Unionist forefathers by flying the flag that opposed them.
Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton bump
Drivel and buncombe.
There was nothing "artificial" about sovereignty, its definition, or its settlement on the People of the States. That's how American sovereignty is historically vested.
Consult the Treaty of Paris, the Articles of Confederation, the numbers of the Federalist, Jefferson's diary, or Madison's minutes of the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution. Consult the records of the ratification conventions that deliberated the new Constitution, if you like.
Sovereignty belongs to the People and no other. The People are the People of a State, specifically, at the ratification of the Constitution that founded the Union, the thirteen States acting through the Congress to call the Constitutional Convention and then sitting individually to ratify the Constitution severally and independently.
That was true before the PC race hustla crowd started demonizing all Southern heritage in the early 80s.
I can remember when even liberals coulda cared less about Confederate stuff. It was seen for what it is. Regional history and cultural identification.
Now, we have come so far into the PC netherworld that so called Conservatives equate Southerners who refuse to buckle and piss on their ancestors as Nazis.
Labeling folks Neo-Confederate is just a smear attempt to silence whatever logical argument they may have.
Underneath all of this is race....as usual.
I have come to the conclusion that for "White" Americans that there is no stronger emotional impulse than the need to prove how sensitive one is to minorities ...especially blacks. It has gotten ridiculous and has bred contempt from blacks.
It's a joke. We fret over old history while Rome burns on all fronts.
There was a brief eclipse of sanity over racial affairs after the death of Jim Crow and the rise of the Great Society....maybe 70-80 and then it all went to shite.
Now folks are more concerned with being offended or making believe to feel better or have more pride than they are real results and candor and our culture has coarsened to a point I never thought possible....yet folks have to harp on flags and the ill doings of whites past....selectively of course.
The point is that there are more black people who support the Confederate battle than the brainwashed few that don't. Saying everyone you know doesn't support it isn't a basis by which to make the sweeping statement that was made.
I think we have a winner.....
The polls I've seen suggest most opinion on "ban-the-flag"/boycott initiatives hovers somewhere around "why don't you give it a rest?"
But historically, it's tied IMHO to a) NAACP's internal problems that Kweisi Mfume inherited in the early 90's and also to b) his initiatives to help Bill Clinton by turning a couple of elections with "stealth" turnout efforts that used a lot of red meat thrown around "under the radar". I think that "under-the-radar"/"don't-let-them-see-you-coming" stuff was Clinton's idea, because he did the same thing in his own behalf in the big [paid-for-by-China] polling/advertising campaign he and Tricky Dicky Morris did in April-July 1995 to determine the outcome of the 1996 election before the Republicans even held their first caucuses.
In 1998, coincidentally with some of the biggest flag agitation, the Democrats tried to surprise the Republicans by snatching back the House of Representatives (which would have effectively nullified Clinton's impeachment without a trial) with a "surprise" 60% uptick in black turnout, energized by the NAACP using, among other things, the flag issue, as well as the "those people" issue, viz. the fact that so many GOP conservatives were white Southerners -- "those people".
It's also tied to the resolution passed in I believe 1996 by the NAACP calling for the removal and destruction of all historical markers and memorials honoring Confederate dead and such plus the total ban on the use of the Confederate battle flag. I have a bookmark to this on my other computer but not this one.
Yes to Confederate flags at memorial sites. No to Confederate flags in northern territory like Blount County, Tennessee.
we southerners do NOT come to damnyankeeland & disparage your union heroes/flags/memorials.
PLEASE do NOT denigrate OURS.
fwiw, expect to see many more "in your face" displays of our battle flags, all over dixie, REALLY soon!
furthermore, we neither need nor want to hear the opinions of DAMNyankees about any subject. (we have quite enough "homegrown" morons/haters of our own down here.)
free dixie,sw
he was LOUDLY CHEERED by persons of MANY races/skin-tones/religions. he also got hugged/kissed by MANY ladies of all ages/sorts! (SHHHHHHHHHHHH, don't tell his lady about THAT. it's a SECRET! rotflmRao!)
also, he told me that when he marched on the Texas State Capitol, to demonstrate against a legislative resolution, that defined "showing the Confederate flag on Capitol Grounds" as a "misdemeanor amounting to a breach of the peace",that he gained nearly TEN POUNDS from all the "soul food", tamales,pies,cakes,Chinese food,chicken & dumplings, pizza, etc. that ladies "from 8 to 80" brought him! (he was "camping out" in a pup tent, in OPEN & NOTORIOUS VIOLATION of that resolution, ON the grounds of the Capitol at the time.)
i had to LOL at that!
also, as a result of that "camp out" the offending resolution was quietly WITHDRAWN!
free dixie,sw
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.