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An Open Letter / Facebook Censorship / “Hate Speech”
May 22, 2020
Facebook Censorship / “Hate Speech”
Dear Ms. Lunelle,
It has come to my attention that Facebook is an organization that is not bound in its operation by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution and has been deemed by the American courts to have a waiver thereof.
This leads me to the posting by one of the Save Southern Heritage Florida Facebook page administrators relating to my Open Letter & Open Report, declaring that February, so called Black History Month, I have proclaimed “Beat Up On White Folks In The South Month.” I have since learned that this event post was declared by Facebook to go “against community standards.” And, it is inappropriate and warrants “suspension of the page holder because its content is hate speech.”
This is unacceptable to me.
I, who was born Negro and referred to as a colored man in the era of Jim Crow in the year that the state of Israel was born, and who served as a student council representative in a Jim Crow school; I, who was the first black man to work for M.B. Haynes Electric Corporation in the city of my birth;I, who served on the United States Army Race Relations Council at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey’s Signal Corps School; I, who served as the first Vice President and President of the Asheville, Buncombe County NAACP, who co-founded the Black Student Center at the University of Minnesota, and who served as its board chair and student regent; I, who served as board chair of Sabathani Community Center, a United Way social service agency in South Minneapolis, who served at the request of the late and Honorable Otis Vaughn, President of APAC, a Fortune 500 Company, to represent several black and women-owned companies doing business with the North Carolina Department of Transportation in their contract letting. And I, who served on the Buncombe County Commissioners Task Force to re-write the City of Asheville, Buncombe County Joint Minority Business Plan; I, who served as Chair Emeritus of the Board of Advisors of the Southern Legal Resource Center, a non-profit civil rights law firm that specializes in litigating Southern Heritage civil rights violation;
I, who would don the uniform of the Southern soldier with the Southern Cross in hand, marching some 1,600.1 miles from Asheville, North Carolina, to the Supreme Court building in Austin, Texas, on the Historic March Across Dixie, while receiving from the black mayor in Toccoa, Georgia, the key to their city, and not to forget, the key to the City of Carthage, Texas, that I, who on the aforementioned journey (MAD) would receive a Proclamation from the Mayor of Logansport, Louisiana, declaring it HK Edgerton Day for showcasing the history of the African peoples place of honor alongside a man before, during and after the War for Southern Independence that they called not only master, but also family and friend, that I who hold more honorary memberships in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a non-profit Heritage organization, than any man alive; that I, who hold honorary and associate memberships in the United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters, and is a recipient of their Jefferson Davis Medal;
I would ask of Facebook if it feels it appropriate to have its users posting war memorials and cenotaphs defaced, destroyed or removed of our Confederate heroic dead, or any soldier of our country on Memorial Day, or any day?
And, worst of all, putting the blame on black folks! Smells like a return of the South back to the Thaddeus Stephens Reconstruction agenda of racial divide and hate mongering.
I want to talk about Black history that includes the Pole Bearers, a black civil and human rights organization who proclaimed that after what these folks not of the Southern soil, or scalawags of it, did to use black folks as the weapon of choice against the Southern white man during the twelve year period of so called Southern Reconstruction, and who vowed that they would never let it happen again. And, that they would do everything they could do to regain and retain the loving relations and relationships with the Southern white man. Another black civil rights organization out of Savannah, Georgia, the Knights of Brotherhood Monumental organization, would post in the Savannah newspaper its intent to not only support the actions of the Pole Bearers, but also to accept it as their modus operandi as well.
I can only say to Facebook: my life experiences warrant me eminently qualified to make and voice the assessment of content discrimination in the presenting of Black History Month as no more than “Beat Up on White people of the South Month” with little or no history that coincides with social and vertical mobility with the aid of Southern white folks.
Facebook saying my February proclamation is “Hate Speech” is like Joe Biden saying to Charlemagne “you ain’t black.”
And that Facebook’s attack upon Save Southern Heritage’s posting of my remarks is nothing more than hugger mugger, censorship and suppression of facts. And, not to forget, an outright libel of my character and intent.
I call on Facebook to immediately review and reverse this decision, accompanied by a letter of apology to Save Southern Heritage Florida, its page administrator and myself. I can only hope that this letter reaches them, and that the right decision is made before any other action is taken. God bless you!
Your brother,
HK
Chair, Board of Advisors Emeritus, Southern Legal Resource Center
Member, Save Southern Heritage Florida
President, Southern Heritage 411
