Feature Story

*By Alyson Sheppard *

Staff writer

H.K. Edgerton held the flagpole from his waist and marched slowly down the street, smiling through his white beard. When he got to the corner of Ann and Government Streets, he saw a pair of black women standing on the corner shaking their heads. He tightened his grip on his Confederate battle flag, tipped his wool cap to them – the only other people in sight with his same skin color – and turned the corner.

On Saturday, Edgerton marched alongside other members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) in a funeral procession to honor an unidentified Confederate soldier whose burial is believed to be the last of its kind, according to the president of the CSS Alabama Association, Robert Edington.

The CSS Alabama, a Confederate naval ship commanded by Mobile’s Adm. Raphael Semmes, sunk 143 years ago in the English Channel. European fleets rescued most of the sailors, but about a dozen men disappeared. In 2002, the ship was excavated and a year later, the last sailor’s skeletal remains were found attached to one of the ship’s cannons.

Police escorted several hundred marchers in period costume carrying swords and bayonets the two miles from the intersection of Government and Royal Streets to Magnolia Cemetery on Ann Street to lay the body to rest. In front of them, horses drug a caisson carrying the wooden casket containing the sailor’s remains.

The bystanders lining Government Street either stood silently, watching and taking pictures with their camera phones or yelled at the marchers.

“You’re bringing your son home!”

“Roll Tide!”

“Stop all of your redneck Confederate bullshit!”

Barbara Allen of Trenton, Fla., walked briskly alongside the procession to the cemetery. Her husband is a delegate to the SCV. She came to the procession to show respect.

“History is very important to us,” she said. “It ties us to our grounds.”

She said she was not opposed to questions or criticism from people who did not understand what they were doing, as long as those people were willing to talk.

“Anything you love, no matter what the subject is, is going to have both sides,” she said. “We are not a racist organization at all; we have several African-American members.”

Edgerton, of Asheville, N.C., was one of the only African-Americans seen at the march. He participates in many Civil War reenactments, speaks publicly around the South and runs his own Web site, www.southernheritage411.com, where the self-proclaimed Confederate activist strives to “bring the real truth of our heritage to people of all races.”

“I don’t see color, I only see family,” he said. “This is history. It’s important that people who look like me, see me.”

He believes blacks and whites in the South both supported the war, and the history taught in schools is the “Yankee version” that pushes “hatred, misunderstanding and ignorance between the black and white races.”

A former president of his local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Edgerton says he gets criticism from other African-Americans, but it doesn’t bother him, because, “even Jesus Christ got criticism.”

He said he was having fun at the procession and was grateful for all of the support from the other SCV members. He is an honorary member of multiple chapters.

Once they made the 90 minute trek to Magnolia Cemetery, onlookers gathered under oak trees and talked ancestry, American history and slavery. The SCV handed out bottles of water in the 87-degree heat, but the Mobile Fire and Rescue team still attended to multiple people who had become overheated in their wool uniforms.

At the Internment Service, men in costume fired Civil War cannons and rifles to honor the soldier as his remains were laid to rest in Confederate Rest, a section of the cemetery where 1,100 Confederate veterans are already buried.

Speaking during the Internment Address, A.J. Dupree, a member of Raphael Semmes Camp 11 of the SCV, said the soldier’s actions were “righteous, just and warranted at the time” and he hoped they honored him appropriately.

“How long will we extol their virtues? How long will we wave the flag of their cause? For as long as the streams of Dixie stir in our hearts,” he said.

The events were part of the four-day long festivities commemorating the SCV’s 112th annual reunion. An estimated 600 members of the SCV and their families were in Mobile for the celebration.

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