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NokX wrote:

this all went down at a local highschool - about 20 minutes from where i live.

Link

Today H.K. Edgerton, a black man from Asheville, N.C., will walk into Maryville with a Confederate flag and a hope for "dialogue.''

He'll stop at the Blount County Courthouse, at about 1 p.m., to get his message out, one that he hopes will bring blacks and whites together, rather than divide people.

He walked this week from Johnson City and has experienced both affection and anger from people he's met on the road.

"This is not about a longevity trip, not like it was when I walked to Texas. This is more about coming to Maryville to try to change ... a social injustice,'' Edgerton said Thursday. "The city of Maryville epitomizes the cultural genocide that is taking place in the South, and continuation of trying to divide and separate blacks folks from white folks around here."

Banning the flag is a part of reconstructionist, revisionist view of history taking place in the South, he said, and along with that comes the loss of a piece of the region's story.

"There's a story that's not being told here in the south end of America -- a tragedy here in Maryville.''

At the courthouse, he said he hopes members of the Maryville Board of Education will come out and talk with him. He was critical of the board's decision to ban the flags.

Now here we have an institution -- calls itself a school board -- it's supposed to be for a process of learning for our children,'' said Edgerton. "Instead of teaching those children the other side of the story, because there's more than one side of the story -- we each come here with the same Northern revisionist history and we start to ban the flag, stop the dialogue -- don't want to have it. ... You can't turn black folks into haters against their sovereign; create all the same kind of reconstructionist hatred that Abraham Lincoln and his boys did around here.

"We've totally opened our arms to folks that come here; now they want to change our morals, who we are as people, dishonor our ancestors, and then all we're going to do is just holler 'slavery' and end the dialogue and, no sir: it don't happen like that, don't work like that.

"There are many Southerners around here just like myself, who are loyal to the South, who know and understand history, and who know and understand this reconstructionist, revisionist policy folks abuse.''

Edgerton said the point of the walk was to call attention to the "ethnic cleansing of Southern history.''

Do they teach the side of the story in which the South lost?

Reconstruction ='ed punishment and dispair for all, newly freed slaves and whites alike.

The south was systematically raped and pillaged by the northern "reconstructionists" who cared NOTHING about the plight of the black man. Slavery was terrible, but "reconstruction" was the equivilant to the genocide of the Native Americans perpitrated by the northern barbarians. Why didn't the "reconstructionists" adopt some plan to help the former slaves out financially?
Because they didn't care one bit about them, that's why.

I understand your point, Robert B., but the Battle Flag of the Confederacy really has little to do with the Confederacy. 
Texas did not begin flying the Battle Flag over its Supreme Court until 1955.  South Carolina didn't fly it over their statehouse until 1962. 
The Battle Flag of the Confederacy has much more to do with the civil rights movement than it ever did the Civil War.  As I said, if people truly wanted to honor the Confederacy, they would want an actual national flag of the Confederacy flown, not the revisionist version and hate symbol that most people think of today.

I wonder what would happen if Germany were to start flying the swastika over their buildings again?  It would probably ruffle a few feathers.

There is no reason why the flag should fly over any government building - it is no longer a flag of any nation.  Put it in history books, let those who wish to fly it on private property or stick it on their pick-ups.

Befire Andersonville gets thrown into the picture, it was run by a Swede, not an American citizen.

The Confederate flag wasn't originally a symbol of racism, but it's been abused by the Ku Klux Klan and half-a-dozen other white supremist groups, in much the same vein that the Nazi party took a symbol of good luck (the swastika) and turned it into something else entirely. I don't have much sympathy, really -- Southern heritage organizations should have fought hate groups tooth-and-nail over their abuse of the rebel flag, instead of their sad show of complacency.

NokX wrote:

probably, but the south was not and is not nazi germany

You're right - it was worse.  Instead of years of rape, torture, murder, treating people as less than human, etc. it was centuries.  Six million Jews (along with many Russians, homosexuals, polticial prisoners, etc.) in the Holocaust.  How many over the years in slavery and the slave trade?  How many people treated as less than equal before the Civil Rights Act?

Last edited by robco (2005-07-06 3:20 pm)

resedit wrote:

Who are the real biggots - those that hate anything and anyone with a southern flag, or those who are proud of their heritage - even though some of it was dark and rightfully challenged and changed?

I don't think anyone is a bigot in this case. 

I do, however, think that those who claim the Battle Flag of the Confederacy is the historical proud symbol of their heritage are revisionists.  --There are much better, more accurate symbols (albeit perhaps less recognizable today) for displaying their southern pride.

robco wrote:

NokX wrote:

probably, but the south was not and is not nazi germany

You're right - it was worse.  Instead of years of rape, torture, murder, treating people as less than human, etc. it was centuries.  Six million Jews (along with many Russians, homosexuals, polticial prisoners, etc.) in the Holocaust.  How many over the years in slavery and the slave trade?  How many people treated as less than equal before the Civil Rights Act?

Yeah, because that only happened in what was briefly the Confederate States of America. 



Sheesh.

Last edited by VegasACF (2005-07-06 5:27 pm)

resedit wrote:

zdecker wrote:

resedit wrote:

Who are the real biggots - those that hate anything and anyone with a southern flag, or those who are proud of their heritage - even though some of it was dark and rightfully challenged and changed?

I don't think anyone is a bigot in this case. 

I do, however, think that those who claim the Battle Flag of the Confederacy is the historical proud symbol of their heritage are revisionists.  --There are much better, more accurate symbols (albeit perhaps less recognizable today) for displaying their southern pride.

Such as what?

http://www.macaddict.com/forums/post/954077#p954077

H.K. Edgerton has been the toy of neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate Kirk Lyons for several years.  A mentally disabled veteran, he was recruited by Lyons as a 'front' for his activities.  Edgerton has served in that capacity with either extreme dedication or a pathetic level of stupidity, according to your point of view. 

Before Edgerton, there were a couple of black brothers, from Mississippi, I think, who were used for the same purposes.  They also had mental problems.  One of them eventually went to prison after numerous encounters with the authorities at Ole Miss.  He would go there, dressed in a gray uniform, carrying a Confederate flag, and get into verbal and physical disputes.  I'm not sure what happened to the other fellow, but he doesn't seem to be around anymore.

You can read more about Lyons here.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep … sp?aid=482

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep … sp?aid=251

If you only have the time or interest to read one series of articles about the neo-Confederate movement, this is the one you should read:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep … jsp?iid=16

There is an infamous photo of Edgerton posing as a Ku Klux Klan member  with Lyons and another long-term leader of the white supremacy movement I will try to locate.   Edgerton also dances for the audiences at neo-Confederate and Ku Klux Klan gatherings.  However, approval of him by them has its limits.  There were calls to 'discipline' him after he kissed a female neo-Confederate on the cheek at a rally.

Edgerton's most well-known act is his march across America to promote the neo-Confederate cause a few years ago.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep … jsp?aid=81

Resedit wrote:

Ending slavery was how Lincoln solved the problem of not enough soldiers, it wasn't the reason for the war.

Back to junior high school for you!  I supect that I'm not the only person familiar with the Articles of Secession around here.  South Carolina's are usually considered the model for most of the others.  But, they all make the main cause the South seceded, causing the Civil War, clear.  It was the desire to continue owning slaves.

Kudos to ZDecker, among others.  These 'symbols of our heritage' that sprang up all over the South in the mid-50s just happend to occur right after the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Southern Manifesto to Congress, and the  "massive resistance" to desegregation movement.  (Massive resistance led to some cities and states shutting public institutions, from swimming pools to schools, to avoid desegregating them.)  Interesting, eh?

Worth reading:

Last edited by Podesta (2005-07-06 7:39 pm)