Former NAACP President Marching for Old South

By Holly Huffman
Eagle Staff Writer

CALVERT, TX -- As the past president of an NAACP chapter in North Carolina, H.K. Edgerton seems an unlikely defender of the Old South and its symbols.

Yet the 55-year-old African American is holding a Confederate flag for all to see and offering his interpretation of Southern history to anyone who will listen as he marches from Asheville, N.C., to Austin.

Edgerton will trek through a few Brazos Valley towns — Calvert on Friday, Gause on Saturday and Rockdale on Monday — en route to the state capital.

Once in Austin, Edgerton says, he will request a meeting with Gov. Rick Perry to lobby for the reinstallation of plaques displaying the Confederate seal that were removed from state buildings.

A member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Edgerton says he grew tired of reading “negative rhetoric” about the South. Slavery was not limited to the South, he said, and it should not be blamed on Southerners.

And he doesn’t like that the Confederate flag, which he affectionately refers to as “the Christian Cross of St. Andrew,” is linked to the shameful practice.

“The whole world was involved in the slave trade,” he said. “The Northland of America had their hands just as tied up and as filthy as anybody.”

For the most part, Edgerton said, he has met with kind-hearted Southerners who have brought him food and water, provided him with a place to stay for the night and money to further his cause. He walks about 20 to 30 miles a day, he said.

But Edgerton says he has met with some resistance along his way, and Robertson County NAACP secretary Dawn Jefferson doubts he’ll be getting a warm welcome from African Americans as he walks through Calvert and Gause.

Jefferson said she is not familiar with Edgerton’s march but knows that many local blacks are opposed to displays of the Confederate flag and other symbols of the Old South.

“Some people will not eat at the Dixie Cafe [in Hearne] just because it has the Confederate flag on the sign,” Jefferson said. “Based on that, you do have some opposition.

• Holly Huffman’s e-mail address is hhuffman@theeagle.com

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