Posted on 10/16/2002 4:10:42 AM PDT by Captain Shady
Published: October 16, 2002
Black man carries Confederate flag from N.C. to Texas Passers-by on Old Highway 25 waved and honked their car horns at a man wearing the uniform and bearing the flag of the Confederate army Tuesday.
NYT Regional Newspapers
TUXEDO, N.C. — Passers-by on Old Highway 25 waved and honked their car horns at a man wearing the uniform and bearing the flag of the Confederate army Tuesday.
White supremacist? Not exactly.
H.K. Edgerton, 55, is a black man. But he considers his “March Across Dixie” a celebration of Southern pride and black dignity, not racism or hate.
Edgerton is the former president of the Asheville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A spokeswoman for the NAACP in Asheville on Tuesday declined to comment on Edgerton’s past association with the organization or the stance he takes today for Southern heritage.
During a ceremony Sunday on the spot where North Carolinians signed themselves into the Confederate army in 1861, Edgerton accepted a Confederate battle flag and prepared to begin a 1,385-mile march to Texas on behalf of Confederate heritage.
He plans to walk 21 miles a day, six days a week to raise money for the Sons of the Confederate Veterans and Southern Legal Resource Center.
Based in Black Mountain, the Southern Legal Resource Center is a nonprofit tax-exempt civil rights public law firm that litigates disputes involving Confederate heritage.
Edgerton believes that both white and black Southerners can embrace the Confederate flag. He blames the Civil War for causing bitterness between the races, and says black people would have earned the same freedoms they have today and suffered much less if the United States had allowed the South to secede.
Edgerton said that instead of white people giving reparations to black people for slavery, the North should pay reparations to the South for what he calls the North’s war crimes. He said the North stole their gold, raped their women, and after the war was over, robbed them of their history.
“America will never be truly great until it pays its debt that it owes to the South,” Edgerton said.
Civil War buff and Flat Rock resident Ted Rydin, who is white, said Edgerton’s view on war crimes and reparations “is so far out of line I can’t believe it. It just doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Rydin, who called the Confederate flag a symbol of slavery, said the North did not commit any more crimes than the South did during the war. He mentioned an incident when Southern soldiers bayoneted a group of black men for supporting the Union army.
Edgerton’s “March Across Dixie” began Monday at the Vance Monument in downtown Asheville. Dressed as an infantry private in a jean cloth shell jacket and sweat-stained slouch hat, Edgerton made his way in the rain through Henderson County on Tuesday.
He was carrying the regulation battle flag, one of several flags he will carry on his march.
Roger W. McCredie, past chief of Heritage Defense, said that Edgerton’s fearlessness and tenacity in his defense of Confederate heritage should be applauded.
Mike Arrowood and Edgerton’s brothers, Terry Lee and Rashad, are accompanying him on the trip and taking footage for a documentary.
Pretty poor article, but at least they spelled his name right.
I'm sorry but Mr. Edgerton just lost me on this one. I respected him for trying to uphold what he sees as his heritage, but when his heritage includes trying to pick my pocket for bullsh*t reparations then he's no different than Robinson and the boobs from N'Cobra.
Heck, I'd settle for making sure schools teach kids REAL history, not just the victor's side of the story.
Thanks for the bump - nice work on the website, Shuck. Keep it up!
Godspeed Mr. Edgerton, this is one Southerner that thanks you and is dang proud of what you're doing
I suppose that there is a chance that he was misquoted. I'm sure that there will be many future posts on this trek and we'll see what he says as time goes by. But I'm still wondering if he's being serious.
Good luck to everybody!
Stonewalls
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