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One of Edgerton's goals was to show support for seven workers at the duPont Company plant near Richmond who were told they had to take signs of the Confederacy off their cars if they wanted to use the company parking lot.
Linda Derr, a spokesperson for duPont, said, "The company has a longstanding policy regarding a respectful work environment. We have a diverse staff here. We don't allow the Confederate flag to be displayed anywhere on our property. We ask employees to cover such flags if they are on their vehicles. But they are allowed to park here."
"Richmond can't afford to be lost by Southerners again," Edgerton said. "Crime in Richmond is due to influence by Northerners.
"I have experienced nothing but love as I walk 15 miles a day through North Carolina and Virginia," he said. He stopped at mid-day Thursday to pay respects at the Confederate monument near the old county courthouse.
Edgerton, now director of the Southern Legal Resources Center in Black Mountain, N.C., said, "We are family in the South. It is a Northern lie that taught the world we hated each other after the War for Southern Independence. And that lie is still being taught to us."
Edgerton, in an Asheville Citizen-Times article published in late 2002, stressed that he supports Southern heritage which, he said was not about slavery, which he abhors. "Black folks were in a place of honor and dignity in the war," he said. "I've said it many times - we made all the foodstuffs for the armies; there were trained cadres of black folks that made all the weapons of war. If it hadn't been for all those black folks, that war wouldn't have lasted four days, much less four years."
Edgerton's 160 mile march from Littleton, N.C. to Richmond isn't his first such march. He said he was in the color guard at the funeral for the Confederate victims of a Civil War submarine battle in Charleston, S.C., this year. "And I attended the funeral for Sen. Strom Thurmond in South Carolina last year. I wore my full Confederate uniform. "Thurmond was a great man who served all races," he said.
When Black History Month is observed, our society no longer honors the memory of blacks who loved the white people, he said, mentioning the Rev. Mac Lee, Gen. Robert E. Lee's cook, who started many churches after the Civil War. And he points to John Leech, who walked home to Littleton, N.C., hand in hand with a Confederate soldier, bringing money and letters to Confederate families.
"There were many black Confederate heroes who you never hear about. What about the blacks who helped in Confederate hospitals and gun powder production sites," he said.
"The Confederate flag is a Christian symbol. The cross in the flag is the Christian cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland," he said.
"I also walk for the Carolina children who are told they can't wear shirts that carry the Confederate flag on them," he said. "If I could, I would walk to New York City and place a Confederate flag at the foot of the Statue of Liberty to remind people that the South has never been fully reconstructed."
Edgerton was escorted through Dinwiddie by Oliver Wells of McKenney, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Brunswick County. "My great-great uncle was buried in Brunswick during the Civil war," Wells said.
"Tell the people in Richmond that I will see them next Tuesday or Wednesday," Edgerton said with a smile. He will walk to Petersburg today and then he plans to take a break on the weekend before marching through Chesterfield and Richmond.
* Ben Bagwell can be reached at 732-3456, ext. 260.
