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Buncombe County Republican Party Executive Committee Meeting



Monday evening, January 28, 2008, I had the privilege of attending the
Buncombe County Republican Party Executive Committee Meeting.As the duly
appointed Buncombe County Education Committee Chair, as the conversations
began to center around the Party’s major fund raiser, I again reiterated to
the full house gathered that the continual reference to this Party being the
Party of Lincoln, and it’s major fund raiser so named as the Lincoln/Regan
banquet did not set well with me as a loyal Southern subject, and while I
could accept the endorsement of Ronald Reagan as a name sake, I and the many
knowledgeable Black folks that this Party continues to say that they want to
target for membership and many of those who are Party members are more than
offended by such reference, and I asked for permission to address the State
Convention about making a change in it’s policy directed to theis matter. I
went on to say that I would not support or vote for John McCain, Rudy
Giuliani, Mitt Romney or any candidate that attacked my flag or the
honorable ancestors of the Southern people who went to war for what they
felt was right.Before I could continue, I was interupted by a Yankee who
wanted to quote the Emancipation Proclamation written by Lincoln as the
saving grace that freed my ancestors from the evils of the economic
institution of slavery. As I began to point out the fallcy of his
statements, he chided me by saying that he wasn’t going to sit and listen to
my bull—-, got up, stormed out and slammed the doors of the Ryans
Restaurant meeting room.

I had not made my statement to offend him or any other Yankee that might
have been present, I just clearly wanted to point out to him and all those
present that the African people have been behind the eight ball in this
country ever since Lincoln, without the permission of the United States
Congress sent an invading force South to the revenue collecting Fort at
Sumter, South Carolina with reinforcements after being asked honorably to
leave with any compensation due to be paid by the State, and found
themselves even further behind that eight ball as they were force by the
Union League and corrupt Union military rulers to vote in the Radical
Republican Party of Lincoln and watch helplessly as corrupt Africans filled
public offices while were being manuvered like puppets on a string as the
South was bankrupted and the loving and caring relationships that had been
forged between a man that thye not only called Master, but also family and
friend were put asunder.

I was not taken back by the Yankee’s reaction,it has been a normal reaction
to me from them;they cussed you out, spit out their poison and storm away.
However, I was and am disturbed by the Southern White men who seem to always
come to defend them. Many Blacks told me just this week as I stood at the
Confederate Monument on the grounds of the Capitol in Columbia, S.C., that
the so called White leaders in the South just make out that they care for
the Confederate flag and their ancestors, yet they so freely vote for a man
like McCain who on more than one occasion expressed his disdain for the
Southern Cross.To them having a Black Yankee named Obama from Illinois was
no worse for them than having a White Yankee like McCain or Romney who was
being paraded in the State that led the separation from a man that had
almost bankrupted the South and surely ushered in by his actions the
separation of an honorable path for an honorable people that would have done
right by those he not only called slave but family and friend.

I can only wish that those gathered would heed my advice and at least take
the time to read my dear friend Mike Scruggs book titled the Un-Civil War to
at least get some sense of why a son of former slaves, and a former NAACP
President could so lovingly embrace the flag and the place of honor and
dignity earned by the African people not only in battle under the glorious
Southern Cross but alongside a man called not only Master, but family in a
world that was complicit in the economic institution of slavery, and further
put his life, and future in great danger daily, while subcoming to increased
personal debts and humilations as the people he fights for give their
support both physically and fiscally to those who hate us because after all
we are just Southern!

HK Edgerton