Black Activist's Life Threatened On March

“We’re going to kill your ass!” say hooded blacks, imitating KKK practices
By Clint Parker
The Asheville Tribune & The Hendersonville Tribune

ASHEVILLE, NC -- Just days from the Texas state line, Southern black activist H.K. Edgerton decided to return to Asheville, NC for a break from his “March Across Dixie” in order to enjoy the Christmas holidays and to have some repairs made to his brother’s van.  The Tribune took the time to interview Edgerton about a frightening incident
that occurred in Grambling, Louisiana.

Edgerton, the former head of the Asheville branch of the NAACP and for the last five years a defender of the Confederate flag and the heritage of the South, began his 1300 mile march from Asheville, NC to Austin, Texas on October 14th.

The walk is a tall order for the 55-year-old man who will be carrying a Confederate flag the whole way. The primary purpose of the march, says Edgerton, is his desire to expand the awareness of the need to defend Southern heritage and its history and to promote the truth about Southern history that is constantly being rewritten.

Edgerton said the incident occurred on Thursday, December 12, inside the Grambling city limits, when he and some companions were approached by about 14 people from the Pine Crest Apartments. A man with a hood told the group, “You’d better have your guns ‘cause we’re going to kill your ass.”   However, this man and the people with him where not part of the Ku Klux Klan, but a group of blacks upset with the group’s carrying the Confederate Flag.  Edgerton said that wasn’t the scariest part.  That was to occur later.

The Grambling Police Department was called, and a police officer arrived on the scene.  The officer asked Edgerton and his group to furl their flag and to get into their van.  The officer said that the Grambling mayor wished to see them.  Edgerton said he asked the officer to escort them.  The officer said that he would if they would drive to the corner and wait for him there. Edgerton said they did as they were instructed.

When they reached the corner, they were met by the Chief of Police and told that if they entered Grambling they could expect trouble and that the best thing they could do was keep on traveling.  Edgerton asked the Chief for protection for his group from the mob that had threatened them.  The Grambling Police Chief told him that he was too busy to protect the group from harm.  This comment is what alarmed Edgerton the most.

Edgerton continued marching, and after a short time a van slowly pulled up to him and his group and said that there was an ambush waiting for them just around the corner.

Edgerton halted the march until a sheriff’s deputy had been summoned again.  The deputy escorted the group for the rest of the march that day.  “It appeared that he’d (the Chief) had climbed in bed with them (the mob),” Edgerton told the Tribune.  “Everywhere I’ve been, including Clemson (SC), the police have been very nice to us,” Edgerton stated, adding that Grambling was the exception.

The Tribune contacted Grambling Police Chief Eugene Smith about Edgerton’s assertion that the police chief refused to protect them. “He’s lying,” responded Smith, who said that he could find no evidence that Edgerton or his group was ever threatened.  Smith did admit that he asked the group to leave town in anticipation of trouble.

Asked why he believed that Edgerton and his group would be in danger, Smith said that his town was a diverse college town, with people from all over the country.  He said he was afraid that Edgerton’s group marching through the city might cause trouble, so he asked the group to leave town.

Asked if the community was not tolerant of other people’s views, Smith avoided the question and again discussed the community’s diversity.  Asked again if he was saying the community was not tolerant of different views, Smith said he was not saying that. “Now what do you think would happen if he’d march down a street in Watts (California)?”

When asked if there was a difference between his refusal to protect Edgerton’s group and what some white police did to the Civil Rights’ protesters of the 1960s, Smith repeated that he could find no evidence that the group ran into problems.  Smith said that he believed the group was trying to create an incident.

According to Edgerton that’s just the opposite of what he wants to accomplish.  Edgerton said his march is about showing that the Confederate Flag (or what Edgerton calls the Christian Cross of St Andrew) is not a point of contention among blacks in the South. Instead, Edgerton asserts that the flag is a device that Northerners are using to remove Confederate symbols from all people of the South.

The current ‘segregation’ of Southern culture, and particularly the Flag, by the uneducated liberals is no different from the ‘segregation’ that the blacks faced earlier.

“Lying about the South and re-writing history so the people remain ignorant of what really happened only continues to separate the races.”

This incident in Grambling seems to support Edgerton’s theory, since he has traveled from North Carolina to Louisiana before running into trouble with a college town full of students from around the nation. Indeed, Edgerton’s only other run-in with the law on his journey was in Clemson, another college town, and Edgerton said that the Clemson incident in no way compares with Grambling.

Edgerton affirms that his whole trip, except for Grambling, has met with positive response from blacks and whites across the South. He showed a picture taken in a small town near Grambling with several blacks who wanted to have their picture taken with him and his flag.

Edgerton says because of the incident, several people have asked him to change his route.  He has refused, saying he will not back down. He also added that Grambling has not seen the last of H.K. Edgerton or his flag. “I have to go back there before I can rest,” stated Edgerton.

Editor’s note: Further information on HK’s march can be found at:

http://www.ashevilletribune.com/the_man_behind_the_rebel_flag.htm
and at www.southerncaucus.org/hkedgerton.htm

© December 26, 2002, The Asheville Tribune & The Hendersonville Tribune