Black Man Carries Confederate Flag From NC TO Texas

Spartanburg Herald-Journal ^ | Oct.16,2002 | Tony Mator

[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.

[Non-Sequitur]

We'll cut out the middle man and make the check payable to the Black Reparations Movement people. You'll just be turning it over to them anyway.

[hosepipe]

Now, thats what I call looking racism in the eye and spitting in it......
The guys a genius!..
(applause)

[stand watie]

!

[Colt .45]

Uhhhhhhhhhh, I believe he is referring to the war crimes of Sherman's March, Sheridan's destruction of the Shenandoah Valley, and Reconstruction's rape of the Southern states. Reconstruction and Sherman's March were nothing more than official excuses for pillaging and plundering the private homes of the wealthy Southerners. I daresay the Yankees would've howled forever had Lee allowed his troops to conduct themselves in the same manner as Sherman did. And I quote - 'On August 4, 1863 W.T. Sherman in camp on Big Black River, Mississippi, wrote to Grant at Vicksburg, "The amount of burning, stealing, and plundering done by our army makes me ashamed of it. I would quit the service if I could, because I fear that we are drifting to the worst sort of vandalism ... You and I and every other commander must go through the war justly charged with crimes at which we blush.'(emphasis is mine)

'General Bussey on March 8, 1865, reported to Major General Joseph J. Reynolds, Department of Arkansas: There are several thousand families within the limits of this command who are related to and dependent on the Arkansas soldiers in our service. These people have nearly been robbed of everything they had by the troops of this command, and are now left destitute and compelled to leave their homes to avoid starvation ... In most instances everything has been taken and no receipts given, the people turned out to starve, and their effects loaded into trains and sent to Kansas.' - 'The Uncivil War: Union Army and Navy Excesses in the Official Records' by Thomas Bland Keys copyright 1991. This book is an excellent chronicle of Yankee atrocities perpetrated on Southern civilians and it comes from the Official Archives of the US Army and Navy. This is what the man is talking about and it in no way makes him "out there on some wavelength".

[goodieD]

couldn't be more pleased about this!

[catfish1957]

A bump for HK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[don-o]

H.K. Edgerton is marching because he found some boobs that will give him more than 15 minutes of fame.

The poster is obviously jealous since he ain't had his 15 minutes, nor do we expect him to.

Good on whoever posted the latest update.

Let's keep this one thread running and bumped.

[catfish1957]

You know Don, if everyone would ignore WP and NS, they'd go away.

[mafree]

I think this walk brings out some interesting thoughts on both sides of the fence.

I sure wish Mr. Edgerton the best and hope his journey is safe.

[PistolPaknMama]

Bump for Dixie and HK! woo hoo!

[Non-Sequitur]

OK, show me someone who personally lost property to Sherman and we'll talk. Until then you and Edgerton and all the other reparations promoters are looking for a free ride at my expense, and I'll flush my money down the toilet before I give it to any of you.

[Non-Sequitur]

Not hardly, no matter how much you would like me to.

[don-o]

You know Don, if everyone would ignore WP....

You are correct.

I will hold my fire.

Walt fooled me some time ago, on a thread. His true colors fly now.

[don-o]

Now, thats what I call looking racism in the eye and spitting in it...... The guys a genius!..

And a brave man.

As this story gets coverage, no doubt hooligans of every stripe will show up to harrass HK.

If you pray, then pray for his safety.

If you give money, then consider a donation.

[catfish1957]

I hope he makes a return trip via I-10. I will be there cheering him on.

[Colt .45]

There ... now that is a typical loser response. I give you proof of what the man says, and you dodge it with the "show me someone" crap. I don't want any of your money, I was just illustrating with proof what the man was saying. You think what Sherman did was okay and justifiable, yet you would condemn Stalin and Hitler for their atrocities (which they say they did for the good of their nations) ..... hmmmmmmmmmm ... figure the odds. A typical Yankee, full of the hot air and horsesh*t of hypocrisy.

[lentulusgracchus]

This book is an excellent chronicle of Yankee atrocities perpetrated on Southern civilians and it comes from the Official Archives of the US Army and Navy. This is what the man is talking about and it in no way makes him "out there on some wavelength

Excellent reply, sir, with a useful cite, to an unreconstructible revisionist. I appreciate the quote, and note the title.

"LG"

[Non-Sequitur]

Typical loser response? You piss and moan about damage caused during a war that your side started and I'm the loser? You may not want any of my money - and I assure you that I'm not about to give any of it to your reparations movement or any other one - but it seems that Mr. Edgerton doesn't have the same qualms.

[Colt .45]

While I do not believe in reparations for slaves, I do feel that the Federal Government, The US Army and Yankees need to acknowledge their wrongs committed in the name of supposed "Union of States". It was nothing more than imperialism at its worst. The forced subjugation of the Southern States to remain in the Union was totally against what the Founders had fought for ... LIBERTY ... Man-over-Government ... self-determination! Lincoln totally prostituted the values our Founders bled for to further his own agenda. He didn't care about the slaves, but he did care about his damned revenues! He usurped the Constitution where he could get away with it under the guise of "extraordinary times calling for extraordinary measures." There is nothing in the Constitution that gave him the power to set aside Habeas Corpus ... that originally was to be decided by Congress with the guidance of the Supreme Court. His shutting down of news papers that didn't support his stand on war with the Confederate States ... a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Military tribunals for civilians in Maryland?! Come on now .... Maryland was put under martial law for the express purpose of keeping it from voting on secession!

Then lets move on to Reconstruction (?) ... if you agree that setting up puppet governments in the Southern States was for the good of the Country, then you do not believe in Individual Liberty as conceived of by the Founders, nor the Republic they set up. Not to mention "Reconstruction" was nothing more than a guise for Yankee Carpetbaggers to head south and get rich off of picking the corpse of the Confederacy. They were nothing more than jackals who stripped the leavings that Sherman and his vandals overlooked when they went through. Yet you say the civilian populace of the South deserved no less because they had the temerity to secede? Horse sh*t! They utilized that which was a cornerstone of American belief for years ( and still is by the way) ... the right to alter or abolish a government when it fails to accomplish their needs! You know ... Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness?! But because they failed in their quest, you apparently agree they were rightfully at the mercy of a vengeful government. No sir! The North had no right to strip the Southern States civilians during or after the war.

But if you're of the school "Might makes right" then you will have to concur that what Hitler and Stalin did was okay also, no matter how many they killed or whose liberty was taken away. You can't have it both ways.

Just cause Lee surrendered don't mean I did!

[Non-Sequitur]

Next think you know you'll be having us apologize to the people in Viet Nam. Maybe we have, for all I know.

Hell will freeze over, pigs will fly, and Hillary will be president before I will consent to an apology for actions taken during a war that the south initiated. Remain in denial all you want, but if an apology is in order then I suggest you find someone who can organize a seance, channel the spirit of Jefferson Davis and get the apology out of him. He brought it on you.

By the way, Maryland did vote on secession, April 29, 1861. They rejected it in favor of a neutral position.