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Historical March Across Dixie Documentary


From: H.K. Edgerton [mailto:hk@slrc-csa.org]
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 10:36 AM
To: ‘epbutler@usit.net’
Subject:

Dear Commander Butler,
It has been my intent to play the Historical March Across Dixie
Documentary on Charter Channel in Maryville, Tennessee, for three
one hour segments beginning on January 16th and ending January
18, 2006. Most of the details have been worked out with the exception
of funding. To date my plea for help for resources has netted
$228.00.

The euphoria of the football season in Maryville has subsided;
the presence of the flag at the basketball arena is much needed.
The time to teach is here as much as visibility. There is here
in Maryville an opportunity to bring our Southern family together
again in understanding . There are forces who are anti-Southern
at work in Maryville who come with the same abolitionist rhetoric
saturated with lies and pretended love for the poor mistreated
Black folk, and all the ways to beat up on the bad old White Southern
folk and get even. We can either go on the offense for our Southern
family by peacefully teaching truth here in Maryville, and then
let the chips fall where they may. We must tell our young Black
children about the Union or Loyal Leagues and the part they played
in the divide of our southern family. We must tell our young White
children of Levi Carnine, Holt Collier, Rev. Mack Lee, Hattie
Edgerton, and of the throngs of loyal Black Confederates . We
must remind the nation of an honorable people who have never had
their day in the body politic; a place where this nation can pay
her debts to the Southern people. I am truly offended by the Poverty
Pimps who want no true sense of history; least they would read
the Morril Act, the Original 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment
with an understanding of an old Southern saying: the pot can’t
call the kettle black. The resolve of the love that we have as
family here in the South is the one thing that all the Northern
chicanery can not undo. To make historical traitors of Southern
Black folk is an outright lie, and to try to turn us all into
modern day traitors by attacking the Confederate Flag, with some
kind of supposition that it has earned for Black folks some kind
of justice is pure poppycock.

H.K. Edgerton

H.K.:

"We don’t mind the flag, we just never found any ownership
in it". We heard there were Black Confederate soldiers, but
until the day we saw you sitting outside Maryville High and attending
our football games, we never knew what to think other than White
folks used it against us when they were mad at us. The irony was
that neither the Black or White kids could tell me the name of
one single Black man who had served the Confederacy."

These lines above that you wrote a few days ago do much to explain
the feelings of many black children. If they knew the real story
and history of black folks during the war, I believe they would
feel much differently.

Therefore, I think it is incumbent upon us to educate these children
about their ancestors. I will work toward putting together as
much information about this subject as possible over the next
few years and make it public on our web site.

We need to think about creative ways to get this information
to the children and adults.

If you find or have information that you think would help and
needs to be included on our site, please inform me and I will
see that it is added.

Your unwavering love for everyone, black and white, and your
unselfish and giving nature is awe inspiring, and is constant
a source of inspiration for me.

Sincerely,
Dewey Barber