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.
It's pretty clear to me that he was. We say things like that (and worse) all the time here.
It's a statement designed to draw attention to the fact that the question of who owes whom isn't as simplistic as the mainstream reparations crowd would have it. That's why we often respond with "Hey, where's my reparations for X?" We don't really want it, but it's a way of letting the pro-rep folks know that the road they're travelling won't lead to where they want it to go.
I think that his actions prove that this person is for real. He's literally walking the walk.
And you did well in getting it posted first thing this morning. All Southrons on the March route should follow your lead.
So true, our hearts are with him.
"Southern Redneck Conspiracy"... when is the album coming out? I'll buy it.
Yep, send me my check!
LOL -- and the KKK will be calling it "the Northern blackneck conspiracy"!
Maybe Al and Jesse and Professor Jefferies and Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution and Sheila Jackson Lee could all get together with the local Klavern over bourbon and branch at the nearest red-neck watering hole and figure it all out! Then at least they'd all be on the same page about who to blame for Mr. Edgerton. It would become a historic meeting: the Dew Drop Inn Compact of 2002. It'd go down in history.
Any takers for that one?
Indians up first, then the black people, then the South .... then the Chinese....and who else have we got? Anyone else like some? The Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Columbia classes of 1940 through 2001 are paying......
Flat Rock is Lincoln Country, courtesy of "Connamara"(sp?)Carl Sandberg's home which is located there. Because he wrote, what at the time was the definitive biography of Lincoln, Sandberg is revered by those who can afford to live around his old farm home.
H.K. Edgerton is marching because he found some boobs that will give him more than 15 minutes of fame.
Walt
Entered South Carolina on Old Highway 25 at 9:45 AM greeted by Melissa Capps and her young son and Robert Owings of the Pickens Camp. Proceeded down Old 25. Seven miles down the mountain, our host in Flat Rock, Michael Arrowood and his friend Christie met us and walked 2 miles with us. Another Gentleman and his wife joined us at the 10 mile marker and walked a couple of miles with us. Lots of people stopped along the way to give us water, support and love. A man from the Pickens Camp and his son brought us lemonade.
When we arrived on New Highway 25 we met 3 ladies, Becky Westmoreland, Claire Cummins and her daughter Mary Jo, brought us water and crackers and a donation, took 20 pledge forms.
The ladies and I were interviewed by WYFF TV in Spartanburg and Bob Dill of the the Times Examiner stopped to take pictures and drop off copies of the Times with my handsome self on the front page. Greenville News also came by for an interview and because of the abysmal ignorance of the reporter, I delivered to the young man a free history lecture - no charge.
We then walked into Travelers Rest and was stopped by several people including a student at Greenville High School, Chelsea, who will report on the march to her school. At a local gas station, Liza Henson and her friends threw an impromptu party for us. Dimples & Bentley Willis, lifelong Black residents of Travelers Rest, told us how very proud of us and our March they were, and wished us Godspeed. We walked half a mile further to the stopping point, the intersection of Highway 25 and Highway 123. Total miles for the day was 22.
A young man from Camp 1987 Capt P. D. Gilreath from Greer, SC brought a donation from his Camp and his Mother. We will publish his letter on the webpage - but my warmest thanks to all my compatriots in Greer.
Thank you Robert Owings of the Pickens Camp for all your help & support.
TOMORROW: Easley and Liberty SC.
Respectfully Submitted,
HK Edgerton
PLEDGE TODAY!
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