The Southern
Legal
Resource Center
NEWS RELEASE
For immediate
release Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Black Southern civil rights
activist denounces removal
of Confederate Battle Flag from
cemetery
BLACK MOUNTAIN, NC
--
H. K. Edgerton, a black man and former NAACP officer turned
Southern activist, today lambasted a Sons of Confederate
Veterans camp in Covington, Tennessee, for removing the
Confederate Battle Flag from a local cemetery where it has flown
for the past 12 years.
In a public ceremony held
last week, the SCV's Simonton-Wilcox Camp 257 struck the battle
flag, which memorialized the cemetery's 216 Confederate dead,
and replaced it with the Confederate First National Flag, known
as the "Stars and Bars." Camp Commander Robert Wallace said the
flag switch was made because there is a "perception" of the flag
as "a symbol of slavery and hatred" associated with the Ku Klux
Klan.
But Edgerton, who gained
international fame by carrying a
Confederate battle flag
1,300 miles across the South on foot in 2002, called its removal
from the cemetery "a cowardly and stupid caving in to political
correctness" and said that far from being a conciliatory
gesture "all it does is feed the biggest cultural lie in
American history and pave the way for more good Southerners to
be persecuted for trying to honor their heritage."
Edgerton is the present
Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the Southern Legal Resource
Center, an organization that provides legal assistance to
individuals whose civil rights have been violated in cases
involving Southern heritage and culture. He called Wallace's
assessment of the public's perception of the flag "absurd,"
adding, "The truth is that the flag you most often see the KKK
waving is the good old Stars and Stripes, but nobody has
suggested pulling the U.S. flag down because of a few idiots in
sheets."
Edgerton said
the current media and political campaign against the Confederate
flag originated in the early 1990's. "It was a put-up job,
mostly by the NAACP, who were looking for a way to divert public
attention away from their own internal troubles. And, oh, it
surely did work. Good Southern people are being persecuted
every day for showing that flag. And here is this bunch of
clowns laying down in the road, thinking to buy a little good
will by substituting another flag. It makes me sick," he said.
"I have seldom been this angry."
Noting that Wallace said
his group intends to install a new grave marker for a black
Confederate soldier buried in the cemetery, Edgerton said,
"Believe me, if that old black Confederate's hallowed bones
could speak, they would say the best memorial Mr. Wallace could
make would be his letter of resignation from the SCV."
Edgerton is an honorary
life member of the
Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
-end-
For additional
information, contact:
Roger McCredie
The Southern Legal Resource Center
(828) 669-5189
