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An Open Letter & Open Report / Lakeland and Fort Myers
APRIL 4, 2018
Lakeland & Ft. Myers
Dear Ms. Lunelle,
On April 2, 2018, the Honorable Attorney David McCallister and myself would travel first to Lakeland, Florida and speak before the city commission there. I could not have been more proud than I was listening to Mr. McCallister put holes in the city manager’s report about the status of removing the Confederate Cenotaph from Munn Park. And not to forget especially Ms. Shelia Tindel’s thought provoking one as well, or the others who spoke so eloquently.
As Mr. McCallister and I would travel later to Ft. Myers and address the council there, and because of the similarities in my dissertation to the Ft. Myers comments to that council in Lakeland, I shall only provide that in Ft. Myers.
“Good evening Mr. Mayor, honorable members of the council, and honorable members of the public. My name is HK Edgerton, and I hail from Asheville, N.C.. I am a member of Save Southern Heritage Florida, past 1st Vice & President of the Asheville, North Carolina branch of the NAACP, President of Southern Heritage 411, and Chairman of the Board of Advisors Emeritus of the Southern Legal Resource Center. Five minutes is not enough time for me to make the case to you, or your citizens not to take down the Cenotaph of the Honorable General Robert E. Lee, a true friend to the African people. The question that I pose to my black family is what are these folks who proclaim to honor Dr. Martin Luther King afraid of? Right up the road in Lakeland, Florida, a young black man, the Honorable Ashley Troutman, stood before his city commission and proposed that they build the table of brotherhood and sit down as Dr. King proposed. Ask yourselves, what are the heads of the NAACP afraid of? Is it because the people will learn the attack on the Southern Cross began in 1989 to replenish their depleting coffers? Or that Dr. King told Rev. Abernathy and Jesse Jackson when they asked him to attack the Confederate Battle flag to leave it alone, and let’s do something about the things we can do something about. The young men standing on corners dealing drugs with no hope, can’t vote, vertical mobility in the job place for women, affordable housing for all of God’s children.
“And that if they attacked the Southern Cross, they might as well slide their chairs under the table because far too many people red, yellow, black, white, brown, freed and indentured, lost their lives under and in defense of it. Are they afraid they will hear the words of black civil rights organizations like the Pole Bearers, or Knights Monumental, who told their people after the 12 year period of so called reconstruction in the South, to do everything they could do to regain and retain the relations and relationship of the only man who ever cared about them, the Southern white man. And to never let anyone not of the Southern soil dupe them against him again. Or the words of Rev. Mack Lee, who educated himself off the funds given to him by General Lee…’Get yourselves an education, buy some land, keep your faith in our Lord and Master Jesus Christ and, beyond all else, only trust the Southern white man.’ I propose that you build that table, and let’s talk. General Lee abhorred the economic institution of slavery, and said if I could give everything that I owned to end it, that I would.”
I told this council that General Lee was an honorable man, and that I would fight a butane burning dragon for him. For the second time that night, I would receive a thunderous applause from my Southern family as I had received earlier after giving an interview to Fox News and another local television station.
HK Edgerton’s Interview in Ft. Myers
God bless you!
Your brother,
HKHonorary Member
Judah P. Benjamin Camp
Sons of Confederate Veterans
