Unlikely Ally Honors Confederacy

Black man's march raising money to aid defense groups
By Stan Bailey
Birmingham News Staff Writer

TUSKEGEE, AL -- Wearing a gray knit uniform, a slender black man carrying a large Confederate flag walked through Tuskegee on Friday on his way to Austin, Texas.

"This march is about our heritage, not about hate.  It is about restitution," said H.K. Edgerton of Asheville, N.C.

Edgerton said blacks fought and died defending the Confederate flag.

"We earned a place of honor and dignity under this flag," he said.  "It's unfortunate that the black soldiers never came home."

He is walking to raise funds for the national Sons of Confederate Veterans Defense Fund as well as the Southern Legal Resource Center.  Folks are pledging money all along the way, Edgerton said as he walked along U.S. 80.

Edgerton, 54, said he left Asheville at 6:30 a.m. Oct. 14, travels about 20 miles per day with his brother following him in a van, and hopes to raise $2 million or more before he arrives in Austin, sometime in February.  He said he doesn't know how much money has come in, but it has been a steady stream.

Although some people have shouted obscenities at him along the way, most have seemed glad to see him, Edgerton said.

"More than anything else, you know what I've heard?  I've heard, `What you're doing will probably promote better relations in the Southland of America than anything we've ever seen happen,'" Edgerton said.  "One young black lady over in LaGrange felt so strongly about it she gave me $100, and wished me Godspeed."

As he walked along the highway Friday, a white woman came out of her house, snapped his photo and wished him well.

A few moments later, three white men in a pickup stopped, snapped each other's photos with him, and handed him a roll of money.  Two white men, Greg Creech and Douglas Barrett, both of Auburn's Camp 16 Sons of Confederate Veterans group, walked with Edgerton through the Auburn area to Tuskegee.

Edgerton is active in Confederate causes.  He's president of the North Carolina Heritage Preservation Association and a member of several Sons of Confederate Veterans groups, he said.

He is also chairman of the board of advisers of the Southern Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit civil rights law firm based in South Carolina. Kirk Lyons, a lawyer with that firm, has represented people who say they have been discriminated against because of their Confederate heritage.

"Men and women have been fired for having a Christian cross of St. Andrew on their lunch pail or on their hat, being sent home and not having the ability to have an attorney," Edgerton said.

Asked how he got the idea for his march, Edgerton said: "You know, God will shake you when things are not right.  God shook me one morning and said, `Boy, you've got to do something better than what you're doing around here now. ' So here I am."

Edgerton said he is trying "to raise the awareness of who we are here in the Southland of America, my Southern family, not just the Sons of Confederate Veterans."

© November 11, 2002, Birmingham News