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.
Isn't that too funny'
I found the quote from the 'Civil War Buff' [ 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], a little strange. He made it sound as if they were out getting petitions signed or having a protest and carrying signs. You know, just peaceful demonstrations.
I do hope his quote of reparations, if true, was sarcasm.
Someone posted his route the other day, is there a website we can keep up with his progress? He will be coming quite close, Texas speaking, to where I live.
.....I take Rydin's comments with a grain of salt.....Flat Rock is an upscale community full of retirees from all over the country.....the South is merely a geographic convenience for many folks these days....they have no loyalty to it because they have no family history connected with it....
Good luck to everybody!
Stonewalls
...it sounds like Edgerton's support of reparations for the South is a tit-for-tat comeback at the idea of black reparations....my view is that nobody should get reparations...BUT...I'm open to the concept of black reparations as a 'one-time last-time' solution to the divisiveness engendered by preferences, set asides, quotas, carve outs ect....as a country we've got to figure a way out of that mess or I expect we're headed for race war...
Good luck to everybody!
Stonewalls
No, all the women I dated had a preference for men with all their teeth and who bathed regularly. Even though I was stationed in Charleston for almost 9 years I still had the good sense to marry an Ohio girl I met at school in Rhode Island.
As I pointed out before, I had no qualms with Mr. Edgerton or his march. I think that some of the statements that he has made were wrong but I was prepared to debate them. But then he interjects this totally bogus bullsh*t about southern reparations. If he truly believes that then he has drifted from heritage supporter to southron clown because because I can't see any difference at all between this kind of reparations and the slave reparations. How can someone say that they believe one is justified without the other being justified as well?
Now, having said that how about you taking a stand? Where are you on the question of reparations? Care to lay out your position or will you cut and run?
I hope he was. I fear he wasn't.
I hope he was. I fear he wasn't.
You have company - many are proud and thank Mr. Edgerton for his service. Deo vindice.
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He mentioned the same reparations thing to me is a conversation I had with him. I did not press the subject, nor can I speak for him. But, I would take it as a rhetorical device to counter the silly, yet serious goal of certain ones to receive reparations for slavery.
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