Black Confederate marching from N.C. to Richmond

Progress Index ^ | 21-May-2004 | BEN BAGWELL

[stainlessbanner]

DINWIDDIE - An African-American man from western North Carolina marched through Dinwiddie County on U.S. Route 1 yesterday, waving his huge Confederate flag as he headed toward Richmond.

Black and white children in a Dinwiddie school bus waved back at H.K. Edgerton, 56, who was born and raised in Asheville, N.C. Last year he served as president of the Asheville NAACP.

His march will conclude next week in Richmond, the capital of what had been the capitol for the Confederate States of America.

One of Edgerton's goals was to show support for seven workers at the duPont Company plant near Richmond who were told they had to take signs of the Confederacy off their cars if they wanted to use the company parking lot.

Linda Derr, a spokesperson for duPont, said, "The company has a longstanding policy regarding a respectful work environment. We have a diverse staff here. We don't allow the Confederate flag to be displayed anywhere on our property. We ask employees to cover such flags if they are on their vehicles. But they are allowed to park here."

"Richmond can't afford to be lost by Southerners again," Edgerton said. "Crime in Richmond is due to influence by Northerners.

"I have experienced nothing but love as I walk 15 miles a day through North Carolina and Virginia," he said. He stopped at mid-day Thursday to pay respects at the Confederate monument near the old county courthouse.

Edgerton, now director of the Southern Legal Resources Center in Black Mountain, N.C., said, "We are family in the South. It is a Northern lie that taught the world we hated each other after the War for Southern Independence. And that lie is still being taught to us."

Edgerton, in an Asheville Citizen-Times article published in late 2002, stressed that he supports Southern heritage which, he said was not about slavery, which he abhors. "Black folks were in a place of honor and dignity in the war," he said. "I've said it many times - we made all the foodstuffs for the armies; there were trained cadres of black folks that made all the weapons of war. If it hadn't been for all those black folks, that war wouldn't have lasted four days, much less four years."

Edgerton's 160 mile march from Littleton, N.C. to Richmond isn't his first such march. He said he was in the color guard at the funeral for the Confederate victims of a Civil War submarine battle in Charleston, S.C., this year. "And I attended the funeral for Sen. Strom Thurmond in South Carolina last year. I wore my full Confederate uniform. "Thurmond was a great man who served all races," he said.

When Black History Month is observed, our society no longer honors the memory of blacks who loved the white people, he said, mentioning the Rev. Mac Lee, Gen. Robert E. Lee's cook, who started many churches after the Civil War. And he points to John Leech, who walked home to Littleton, N.C., hand in hand with a Confederate soldier, bringing money and letters to Confederate families.

"There were many black Confederate heroes who you never hear about. What about the blacks who helped in Confederate hospitals and gun powder production sites," he said.

"The Confederate flag is a Christian symbol. The cross in the flag is the Christian cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland," he said.

"I also walk for the Carolina children who are told they can't wear shirts that carry the Confederate flag on them," he said. "If I could, I would walk to New York City and place a Confederate flag at the foot of the Statue of Liberty to remind people that the South has never been fully reconstructed."

Edgerton was escorted through Dinwiddie by Oliver Wells of McKenney, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Brunswick County. "My great-great uncle was buried in Brunswick during the Civil war," Wells said.

"Tell the people in Richmond that I will see them next Tuesday or Wednesday," Edgerton said with a smile. He will walk to Petersburg today and then he plans to take a break on the weekend before marching through Chesterfield and Richmond.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I salute this brave man. I like this line, "Crime in Richmond is due to influence by Northerners."

No truer words have ever been spoken by mortal man. Damn Yankees!!!

[Indie]

Great find!

[Didn't I hear about this from Katie Couric a week or so ago? /SARC]

[Agnes Heep]

I'd call this guy an Uncle Tom, but that would be a disservice to the literary Uncle Tom, who was anything but an Uncle Tom. So let's just say he's a nut.

[wasp69]

"The Confederate flag is a Christian symbol. The cross in the flag is the Christian cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland," he said.

Amen, sir, amen.

[wasp69]

So let's just say he's a nut.

Why would you say that?

[Laura Earl]

So let's just say he's a nut.

Speak for yourself! In my opinion, he is making a very strong positive statement.

[4CJ]

Kudos to Mr. Edgerton! Deo vindice!

[19th LA Inf]

He's been doing this for quite some time, to the annoyance of fascist PC-zealots everywhere.

A couple of years ago he marched from Asheville to Austin, TX and as far as I know, was well received everywhere except the all-black town of Grambling, LA, home of Grambling State U, where he was run out of town by the local police.

[Agnes Heep]

Why would you say that?

Just think of Rosa Parks in a bedsheet and pillowcase.

[Rebelbase]

"Just think of Rosa Parks in a bedsheet and pillowcase."

That is a crock. I've spoken with HK in person. He is without question the most respectful and dignified man I have ever meet.

[r9etb]

Why would you say that?

Perhaps because Mr. Edgerton says things like this:

"We are family in the South. It is a Northern lie that taught the world we hated each other after the War for Southern Independence. And that lie is still being taught to us."

One supposes it's possible to quibble over whether the racial segregation in the post-war South was due to "hatred" or something else. However, it is silly to suggest, as Edgerton seems to be doing, that the motivation for the segregation was healthy.

[NicknamedBob]

"Just think of Rosa Parks in a bedsheet and pillowcase."

Okay, I can see that. It seems a non-sequiter, however.

If Rosa Parks wanted to stand up for the KKK, I suppose she would have that right, but what has that to do with Mr. Edgerton?

His point, in case you missed it, is that black people, as well as white, fought honorably for an honorable cause, under that banner. The fact that the NAACP has adopted it as a symbol of alleged persecution does not make it so.

[NicknamedBob]

"However, it is silly to suggest, as Edgerton seems to be doing, that the motivation for the segregation was healthy."

Did I miss the quotation where Mr. Edgerton suggested "that the motivation for the segregation was healthy." ...?

[Agnes Heep]

His point, in case you missed it, is that black people, as well as white, fought honorably for an honorable cause, under that banner.

The honorable cause you're referring to was negro slavery. Reminds me of a black motorcyclist I once saw wearing a swastika and a Wehrmacht helmet. What was he going to do when the revolution came, I wondered? Gas himself?

[NicknamedBob]

The honorable cause I am referring to is Independence, and the right of self-rule. This was a war based on economic issues primarily. One can still get a rousing discussion going about NAFTA, and other trade issues. The South was an agricultural products exporter, and did not want the protectionism of the North to interfere with their "free trade."

Incidentally, I find your tactic of putting words in people's mouth in order to make them appear foolish, to be offensive. Please limit yourself to the words that people actually say.

[r9etb]

Did I miss the quotation where Mr. Edgerton suggested "that the motivation for the segregation was healthy." ...?

You apparently missed the quotation I cited, which gives that very impression.

[Agnes Heep]

The honorable cause I am referring to is Independence, and the right of self-rule. This was a war based on economic issues primarily.

Mississippi Declaration of Causes of Secession
January 9, 1861

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify
the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

[r9etb]

The South was an agricultural products exporter, and did not want the protectionism of the North to interfere with their "free trade."

Indeed. That's why the war was, for the South, about trying to maintain slavery. Don't take my word for it -- ask the nice "family" people of Mississippi who, in their Declaration of Secession, said it outright:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.

Note, BTW, that I've taken your advice to "Please limit yourself to the words that people actually say." Mississippi (along with Georgia, and Texas, and South Carolina) all said that slavery was the issue, and several other states referred to their "institutions," which in fact meant slavery.

It's an ugly truth, Bob.