Posted on 10/27/2002 5:22:25 PM PST by stainlessbanner
CANTON, Ga.(AP) - H.K. Edgerton is a proud black Southerner who has no grievance with the Confederate battle flag.
And he's willing to march 1,500 miles across the South from Asheville, N.C., to Austin, Texas, decked out in a gray Civil War uniform and waving the Rebel flag to bring attention to the flag issue.
Edgerton sees the banner as a symbol of Southern heritage shared by blacks and whites rather than one of racial division.
"We were family," said Edgerton. He was in the Canton, north of Atlanta, on Saturday to visit Cherokee High School before marching west to Montgomery, Ala., on Monday.
In September, school administrators banned its overwhelming white student body from wearing to class anything depicting the Confederate battle flag.
Edgerton's "March Across Dixie" began earlier this month in Asheville, where he was a former president of the local NAACP. He's also a board member of the Southern Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit group that provides legal support to people fighting efforts to remove symbols of the Confederacy.
Edgerton blamed Northern reconstructionists for pitting blacks and whites against each other after the Civil War.
"This is Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, that we would all sit down at the same table together," he said.
But some Canton residents disagreed with Edgerton.
"He's an outsider from another state who doesn't know what he's talking about," said Krystal Thomas, a 1999 graduate of Cherokee High, where administrators in September banned students from wearing anything depicting the emblem.
"It's not the flag itself but the attitudes of the people who were wearing them," Thomas said.
Michael Julian Bond, duty director of the Atlanta NAACP, had stronger words about Edgerton's view.
"Nobody can argue with the fact we want racial harmony," Bond said in Sunday's editions of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "but for anyone to think that the Confederate flag is a unifying symbol must be utterly mad."
Edgerton hopes to reach Austin by mid-February. He'll ask officials there to put back plaques honoring Texas Confederate veterans . The plaques were removed from the lobby of the Texas Supreme Court in 2000.
The only reason the "battle flag" is a symbol of division or hate in the 21st century is because people like Jesse, Inc. play it to their everlasting advantage. Ironically, the vast majority of people that are "rallied" by the Confederate Flags are the NAACP types, not the angry-white-suthners.
It's nice to know that some people do know the difference. If you search on CSA or Confederacy, you can find some great sites with lots of historical info.
Here's one that I recommend: Flags of the Confederacy
You may want to look up the italicized word "hereafter" and compare it to "heretofore". One sees that if there is to be a change hereafter a different situation obtained heretofore.
Take comfort, however, in the fact that truth in history of the South was lacking for me too because winners of wars get to rewrite the history taught in most schools. So untruth becomes true for those taught who will teach others in turn. The losers are demonized and vicious, romantic or stupid suppositions replace facts.
Of course I was born in Connecticut and schooled in NJ through the undergraduate experience. What should I have known about Virginia? The majority of our (Northern) blacks were marginalized and in ghettos.
A Virginian today, I can introduce you to descendants of black Confederate soldiers who are proud of the service of their grandfathers, uncles, (whatever). These were free black men of property and business who owned slaves most of whom had never been slaves themselves. (In fact some of their ancestors had also fought in the Revolution.)
These descendants also comprehend and honor the term "free black". To them it is not an epithet, neither would they stoop to refer to themselves as African-American.
I presume that you may not know that only a super miniscule percentage of white Confederate soldiers owned slaves. Please let's not allow the Jesse propaganda wipe away all truth and convince us that we should all presume that empty lies are that truth.
If he got on national TV and caused a news anchor to howl, the rating goes up to 243 Reagans.
If it was Dan Blather, 436 Reagans.
But that's not really a good standard for assessment. How many soldiers in our recent wars had owned any stocks or real property? Most of them were too young. But, if I remember correctly, close to one in two families in South Carolina or Mississippi owned slaves. There was a smaller percentage of slaveowning families in other states and it does depend on how one defines "family," but your standard doesn't fit the situation.
The forced removal and ethnic cleansing of the American Indian by the United States government,which predated the civil war, was a pretty good lesson in hate.
Something about a pot and a kettle?
You may want to look up the italicized word "hereafter" and compare it to "heretofore"
The actual wording of that clause dates from a piece of legislation called the Virginia Manumission Law of 1806. Since Virginia rewrote her Constitution in Virginia rewrote her Constitution twice prior to 1861, in 1830 and 1851. The ratification in 1861 was a hasty convention called to remove all reference of the United States from the document and substitute confederate states. The part I quoted was most likely added in either 1830 or 1851.
These were free black men of property and business who owned slaves most of whom had never been slaves themselves.
There have been several studies on the subject and the researchers have found that in many, if not most, of the cases of black slave ownership the purchaser was buying a member of his or her immediate family as a way to get around the manumission clauses of the Virginia constitution.
A Virginian today, I can introduce you to descendants of black Confederate soldiers who are proud of the service of their grandfathers, uncles, (whatever).
I have no doubt that blacks served the confederate army, some willingly and many unwillingly. But they were in a supporting role, teamsters, servants, cooks, what have you. Blacks were legally barred from combat roles throughout almost all the war. One just has to look at the way Northern black combat soldiers were treated at the hands of the south to realize that there were no large numbers of southern black combat soldiers.
Are you trying to say the wars we have fought were for the stock market or real property? Do you think that just owning anything in America is the only way you can have 'stock in America?'
I really don't understand your post. Are you saying if you don't own stock or real property, you have no reason to support America?
I would have a hard time saying 1 of every 2 'families' in Miss owned slaves. If the statement is true, the definition of 'family' is probably very different than present day.
Only if he attended school 50 years ago. In the South now, the children are taught white men were the scourge of the earth - only blacks, mexicans, and women are any good or made any contribution to the building of this country.
Of course they are also taught that America is just a big bully and grew by the systematic murder, rape, and pillage of the Western Hemisphere.
Ah yes, let's look one of the most notorious examples, the forced migration of the Cherokee in the 1830's. Forced from Georgia and North Carolina by legislation enacted by Andrew Jackson, promoted by the government of those two states. When the actual eviction came in 1835 most of the troops were made up of Georgia militia. So don't try and blame our treatment of the Indian on the North. When it comes to mistreating them both Northern and Southern hands are equally dirty.
"Every once in a while it's good to look back so you can understand where you're going."
Actually Bond, we can argue that fact. It seems to me that black leaders want anything but harmony.
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