Black Southern heritage activist at debate site
By Special to The T&D
Thursday, April 26, 2007H. K. Edgerton, spokesman for Southern heritage and former NAACP officer, announced
he would be in Orangeburg Thursday and Thursday evening in connection with the
Democratic "Path to the Presidency" debate at South Carolina State University.Edgerton says that although he does not have a ticket and therefore does not
plan to attend the debate itself, he intends "to do what I do best, mingle
with my Southern family both black and white, and keep politicians honest. That’s
what I do."Edgerton, former president of the Asheville, N.C., chapter of the NAACP, has
in recent years become famous for championing the display of the Confederate
flag and lambasting what he terms "the war against Southerners and their
culture" which he says is spearheaded by a biased media establishment,
a cynical Hollywood and "self-serving liberal politicians."In 2002, Edgerton gained international attention by carrying a Confederate
flag 1,600 miles from Asheville to Austin, Texas, to protest then-Gov. George
W. Bush’s removal of two commemorative Confederate plaques from the Texas Supreme
Court building. At a town hall meeting in 2004, he presented Bush with a letter
asking the president to help stop "the cultural holocaust that is ruining
the American South.""The South is the victim of a wholesale sellout that cuts across party
lines," Edgerton said Thursday. "It gets even worse in election years
— they turn our culture and heritage into political footballs, to be kicked
around by meddling outsiders who just want black people’s votes."Edgerton is past chairman of the board of advisors of The Southern Legal Resource
Center, a civil rights organization for Southern issues, and holds honorary
memberships in several chapters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
