H.K. Edgerton

H.K. Edgerton
H.K. Edgerton
Born	2/18/1948
Political party	Republican
Home Base	Asheville, NC
Published By	OPP HQ
Published On	October 18, 2017

When you are a Black Republican, it is rather questionable. If you are a full on Black Conservative, you are sad. If you a Black Conservative that makes a lot of apologies for white racism while attacking what is seen as black racism, you are pathetic. If you are a Black Conservative that not only makes apologies for white racism but actually endorses it, you are downright despicable and need to be especially routed. Now if you are a Black man, encourage white racists, and even pose with a picture with two white supremacists that you call your friends, the three of you wearing dinner napkins on your head jokingly pretending them to be Klan hoods, you should never be allowed any influence among any people ever again in life.

That is why we need to give H.K. Edgerton a place here. The Ku Klux Klan and their neo-confederate/white supremacist brethren are responsible for the hatred and bloodshed among African Americans that have put us in the conditions we are in today, conditions that after 400 years we are just beginning to change. Here we have a black man who disregards that legacy and will count among his friends those that want to further it. Calling him scum is disrespectful to scum. It is important to know this guy for another reason. Although he is pretty much shunned by black people who he comes in contact with, he tries to work amongst the African American community considering himself “very much a part of the NAACP,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In fact he is the former president of the Asheville, N.C. branch of the NAACP! It was in this capacity that he has supported neo-Confederate beliefs and ideals. He has spoken and demonstrated at rallies supporting the Confederate flag, giving the more traditional (read: white) pro-Confederate supporters a good token to hide behind when they try to promote the idea that their stance is not racist. Sadly even though some of those supporters are known Klan members, Edgerton will stand with them. One rally in Stone Mountain, Ga. had him shaking hands and conversing with some of these Klansmen, Edgerton saying later he did not know they were. That excuse does not work however, when we speak of Houston lawyer Kirk Lyons, who has been identified as a member of the National Alliance and was even married by Aryan Nations founder Dick Butler at the former AN compound in Couer d’Ilene, Idaho. Despite Lyons activities as a white supremacist, Edgerton praises him as “someone who’s defended more Africans than any other civil rights attorney.” Edgerton even joined the Southern Legal Resource Center, the neo-Confederate organization Lyons helped start up, and became chairman of the board. It was with Lyons and SLRC Associate Director and noted white supremacist Neill Payne that he posed for that infamous picture. It was while he was sharing lunch with the two racists in 1998 at the Blue Rooster brew club in Asheville, a meeting he dismissed by saying, “I break bread with the devil every day.”

White supremacists Kirk Lyons, left and Neill Payne, right pretend they are Klansmen along with Edgerton, who is giving the term “handkerchief head” whole new meaning.

That is not the problem, H.K. The problem stems from wearing the devil’s clothes, calling him a friend and sharing his beliefs, one of them a pro-slavery stance, saying slavery served as an “institution for learning” and romanticizing it touting a “sense of family” between master and slave. The problem is compounded further by an incident the same year of the luncheon where two Klansmen shot up his cousin’s home, which Edgerton believed that it stemmed from his then-position at the NAACP. Despite this, he continues to be an apologist for them, although not as a NAACP member. He was suspended also in December 1998 for non-compliance with NAACP rules when his branch fell into debt, and voted out of office by the membership one month later. After he was bounced out, the state NAACP stepped and Asheville NAACP went from being next to nothing to one of the most active and vibrant chapters in North Carolina.

Edgerton has had a number of failed political campaigns for Asheville mayor and councilman, and he has reportedly been accosted by African Americans while he stood outside a high school with his flag. And every now and then, the devil he breaks bread with reminds him that they are indeed devils, as he learned in May 2016 when he went to a confederate memorial to pay his respects and was protested by a local Klan group!

Nevertheless, he is still out there, and people might see him on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day somewhere in Asheville. He will be standing where celebrations will be taking place waving his Confederate flag. That will be the same flag that South Carolina raised in 1964 to protest the Civil Rights bill King fought and gave his life for. Edgerton is the epitome of fool.

Categories: EPerson Tags: NAACP Asheville NC Neo-Confederate North Carolina