Posted on 07/17/2002 3:35:23 PM PDT by shuckmaster
H.K. Edgerton is a puzzle to many people.
He is a black man and a former NAACP branch president who lends his voice to the national Confederate flag movement.
Edgerton puzzled and angered black parents at a Jan. 15 Lawrence County Board of Education meeting.
That night, he said Northern Reconstructionists caused more post-Civil War harm to blacks than white Southerners did.
He also asked if he could teach students a class on tolerance for Confederate views.
Always animated, Edgerton is hard to ignore. But that's what a civil rights advocate in Asheville, N.C., said people have learned to do.
Monroe Gilmour, who is white, is a member of the Asheville branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Gilmour also coordinates Western North Carolina Citizens for an End to Institutional Bigotry.
"I'll tell you to everyone's credit, no one has harassed him," Gilmour said. "It's like, 'He's a poor soul -- just let him go.' "
Edgerton, who still lives in Asheville, advocates the belief that Southern slaves and their masters worked in harmony, and that blacks fought in the Confederate Army because they wanted to defend the South.
Reversal
It's a complete reversal for a man whom Gilmour described as once the strongest voice for black issues in Asheville.
Edgerton supports black empowerment, tutors black children and encouraged divestment of assets in South African gold mines before apartheid ended. But what Gilmour described as an unwillingness to be a team player led to Edgerton's demise as Asheville's NAACP branch president.
The state NAACP branch suspended Edgerton in 1998. Gilmour said the main reason was a published photograph of Edgerton with two men whom civil rights leaders call avowed racists.
All three wore napkins on their heads to simulate membership in a "Klan."
Edgerton said the state NAACP ousted him after illegally electing another president. Asheville branch officers deny that but decline to comment further. State and national NAACP officials were not available for comment.
Shortly after his ouster, Edgerton became chairman of advisers for the Southern Legal Resource Center. The center files lawsuits against school systems and other institutions that bar the Confederate flag.
Kirk Lyons is the center's chief trial counsel. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Lyons one of the biggest racists in America. Lyons denies the accusation, and says he is a Confederate and an "un-Reconstructed" Southerner.
Lyons said Edgerton is trying to educate people and has found a way to bridge the racial gap.
"Very few people are upset with him," Lyons said.
"The average man on the street loves him."
Gilmour disagrees.
"Many of us feel he is being used as a way for Kirk Lyons to say, 'We care about black people,' " he said.
Lyons was one of the men who wore a napkin in the photograph with Edgerton.
He accompanied Edgerton to the Lawrence school board meeting, and is representing some of the 19 students suspended for wearing Confederate flags on their clothing.
Gilmour said Edgerton has found a false friend in Lyons.
"He's a guy that's searching for acceptance," Gilmour said. "Unfortunately, he has found it hooking up and becoming a mascot of the Confederate flag issue. He's another roadside attraction, and not one that very many people are interested in."
Both Lyons and Edgerton say Edgerton's motivation is neither financial nor retaliatory. Edgerton said he is compensated for his expenses after speaking engagements.
Asheville printer Will Garner introduced the pair at Edgerton's request.
Edgerton said he was trying to find a way to persuade the Ku Klux Klan not to march in Asheville.
A previous march ended with local citizens pelting a small group of Klansmen, and prompted a grand wizard to proclaim that similar actions at the next march would result in bloodshed.
I won't place all the blame on the union, but southern society was left to the dogs during and after reconstruction.
What movement is this, please? I don't see much sign of it here in the People's Soviet of Washington.
You know Gilmour will say Lyons, the SCV, and other Southern groups are paying off Edgerton. The truth is, he probably left more money when he broke off his association with the NAACP.
I love this man - he one of the few who has enough kehones (sp?) to stand up to the black establishment. Men like HK shoot holes in the NAACP's "All Southerners are racist" theory. Gilmour is another leach on the modern day "civil rights" bandwagon. It's hard to dismiss HK when he has the attention and admiration of thousands.
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
Notice - they insist that H.K. is being used; as if he were too stupid to think for himself. That's the type of marginalization that is widely used to categorize those who the racial warlords insist have "sold out their souls."
In their minds, we are either on the path to Hell or are devils ourselves.
I think they are so blinded by racism, they cannot possibly understand a man like HK. While Southrons of all colors welcome him with open arms, the NAACP goons spit and hack because men like HK erode their support base and funding!
Correction, Lyons is the biggest FBI agent provocateur posing as the biggest racist in America.
Many said as much, and their words to that effect can be found in the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writer's Project.
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