Calling the Vance Monument “the crown jewel of the city,” Asheville native and Southern heritage activist H.K. Edgerton, an African-American who lived through the Jim Crow-era here, is disgusted with city and Buncombe County leaders for misportraying Zebulon B. Vance through today’s cultural lens simply as a racist and slave-owner, he told the Daily Planet in an April 7 interview.

To the contrary, Vance, a Weaverville native, was “the bravest, most-honorable, most-decorated individual in the history of the state” of North Carolina, he asserted.

Today’s local leaders “couldn’t carry his dirty drawers to the washer,” Edgerton said of their moral fitness to judge Vance using 2021’s “woke” standards of political correctness.

“I hope that these boys (the 26th) will appeal this” case. “I feel confident that will happen.”

Edgerton’s reference to “the 26th” was to the Society for the Historical Preservation of the 26th North Carolina Troops Inc., which filed the lawsuit to stop the demolition of the Vance Monument. He also noted that he is an honorary member of the 26th, but not a regular member.

Indeed, Edgerton said he likely is — on an honorary basis — a member of more Confederate memorial and Southern heritage organizations than anyone else. He also noted that he has spent much of his life reading — and attending talks — about Vance, the Civil War and Southern culture.As a native and lifelong resident, he also has long-observed the culture and has many contacts providing him with inside information from all direction. He is proud of  his role now as an activist for preserving and honoring Southern culture and tradition.

Following a judge’s decision to deny the group’s motion to halt rhe demolition, Edgerton reiterated that he expects the group to file an appeal.

What’s more, he lamented that the monument’s supporters “can’t step up (in person and in public) because they’ll send the Gestapo to stop you,” based off liberal local leaders’ fears in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by alleged political conservatives supporting then-President Donald Trump.

After a pause, Edgerton then said, “What did we (South) do the last time they flouted the law? Here we go with 1861 — and the War for Southern Independence, again.”

Edgerton referred to the judge as “an ignoramus,” inasmuch as, in Edgerton’s view, the judge, by law, should have sent the Vance Monument issue for review to the State Historical Commission.

In the aftermath of the March 29 decision by Buncombe Superior Court Judge Steven Warren to deny the motion to halt the removal of the Vance Monument, Edgerton said, “The judge is like most of the (Barack) Obama-era (appointed) judges” — much more interested in advancing the Democrats’ political agenda than following the law.

He added that the law clearly says “you can’t remove these monuments unless you go before the Historical Commission,” but that is widely disregarded, as he cited the case of the — in his words “illegal” — recent removal of the Silent Sam Confederate monument at UNC Chapel Hill.

Further, Edgerton said of the Democrats who, in his view, control the state’s justice system, “Neither the governor (Roy Cooper, nor the attorney general (Josh Stein), nor most of the district attorneys,” can be looked to — by Edgerton and fellow supporters of saving the Vance Monument — for justice and full consideration, contrary to his reading of the law.

“I think it’s quite despicable,” he said of the plight of the 75-foot tall granite obelisk. “There’s no need to touch that monument. They’re breaking the law” by doing so. “They don’t have the jurisdiction to do what they’re doing.”

What’s more, Edgerton said, “They (judges) always use ‘standing’ to keep people like me out of court to talk about the monuments.”

He then reiterated, “The law (preserving monuments) is clearly stated and it was signed by a Northern governor and the (North Carolina) legislature.”

After a pause, he added in a reference to the Democrats, “And the sad part of it they use black folks” by twisting history involving white Southerners, purposely riling up blacks to motivate them to vote for Dems and then promising rewards, such as reparations, which seldom if ever materialize.

“All they’re going to do in the end is create a great deal of hate,” Edgerton said.

“I’m disappointed that all these people (Vance Monument supporters) in the town (Asheville) haven’t opened up their mouths about Vance.

“At some point in time, you’ve got to stand up for what’s right....”

So what does he think of Asheville council’s 6-1 vote to remove the monument, with Sandra Kilgore casting the lone dissenting vote? 

Also, what does he think of Kilgores’ assertion that she favors repurposing the obelisk rather than demolishing it?

“I don’t know Miss Kilgore… but I know her Daddy and Mommy,” Edgerton replied. “She based her ‘no’ vote on the cost of moving it. That’ s not good enough for me. You’ve got to put your mind on who this man was (his greatness). She didn’t base her vote on it.”

As for repurposing the monument, he asked,” What do you think you’ve just done? Leave it alone!” 

Edgerton then reiterated his stance that the monument should be cleaned up and then left alone to remind people of Vance’s greatness.

The Daily Planet then asked Edgerton for his response to Vance’s oft-quoted statement by his “woke” critics of today, given on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives (when he was a young man) in which he said the following 

“Even the mind of a fanatic recoils in disgust and loathing from the prospect of intermingling the quick and jealous blood of the European with the putrid stream of African barbarism.”

In this interview and in previous interviews, Edgerton responded that Vance, like any other “great” leader of any race or either gender, was not flawless, but that a few flaws did not take away from his “greatness.”

Edgerton also contended that despite Vance’s sometimes negative choice of words regarding blacks, he never took hateful actions against blacks. He said that, at least on race, Vance’s views reflected simply the rhetoric common to a white Southerner of his time.

What’s more, Edgerton said that, growing up in Asheville through the Jim Crow-era and still living here today, he often heard worse sentiments expressed toward whites — than the worst quotes attributed to Vance — in the city’s most-respected black churches by its most-prominent black religious and political leaders.

After a pause, Edgerton said the hypocrisy on racial issues cuts both ways.

With the so-called “cancel culture” at work, he added, “Don’t think Martin Luther King Jr. will get away” with some of his flaws, such as adultery, despite his greatness — and Edgerton said in today’s crazy political climate, it could take MLK down from his standing — arguably — as black America’s greatest hero. He said the same could be true for the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, with his flaws — and anyone else on which a magnifying glass is placed.

Among Vance’s many great traits was his powerfully voiced defense of the Jews of his time in America, Edgerton said.

He then vented his anger and frustration regarding Esther Manheimer, who is Asheville’s third Jewish mayor and, in Edgerton’s view, has failed to stand up for Vance, when the latter stood up so bravely for those of her religion who were facing persecution during his time.

Regarding Vance’s efforts, “The Christian churches were criticizing Jews as ‘the Christ killers’ — and he (Vance) talked about how honorable the Jews were.” He was “the only white man at the time, speaking all around the United States (positively) about the Jews.

“If they (Manheimer and Asheville’s Jewish community) put in one-thirty-second of the effect that he (Vance) put in for them, then we wouldn’t even be talking about it,” Edgerton said of the Vance Monument.

“I’m ashamed of the Jewish people (of Asheville) for not speaking up for Zebulon Vance... All my Jewish friends — and I love them — aren’t speaking out. They’re just standing around, not together” to speak out in defense of Vance and the monument.

“Mayor Esther Manheimer isn’t even worth being call a Jew,” Edgerton said, reiterating that he has a very high opinion of Jews and a number of Jewish friends. “She’s something else,” based on her political stance against Vance and his monument.

“Her (Manheimer) and Leni Sitnick have opened up the doors of Asheville to Sodom and Gomorroh. Now the devil is upon us.....” 

Sitnick was Asheville’s first woman mayor, serving 1997-2001. She also was Asheville’s second Jewish mayor. (Kenneth Michalove was Asheville’s first Jewish mayor, elected in 1989.)

From a wider perspective, Edgerton said, “The city fathers (originally) tried to turn the City of Asheville into a small tourist town.” However, with the impending demolition of the Vance Monument, “Now we’ll have the problems of New York City.

“These ‘scalawags’ (on City Council and the Buncombe Board of Commissioners) have invaded Asheville — and are trying to ruin the region’s largest city, he contended.

Edgerton added, “This council and this county commission — I despise them... We’re going to spend $35,000 apiece (with allocations each from the city and county) to put things on that square” to replace the Vance Monument, honoring Buncombe’s greatest native.

“They are a bunch of low-lifin’ scalawags,” he reiterated.

Edgerton then added, When you read about who this man (Vance) truly was, if they did, they’d never agree to come along...”

Vance “was a man of the people and he could recite the Bible forward and backward... The Christian churches were criticizing Jews — and he talked about how honorable the Jews were. He was the only white man at the time, speaking all around the United States about the Jews” in a positive and powerful way.

To show their one-party Democrat power over Asheville and to try to lock up the vote of the local black population, Edgerton said, based on his research, certain city and county leaders got together and decided they would have the city’s “crown jewel,” the Vance Monument, demolished and replaced with some politcally progressive imagery.

Edgerton said the leaders had to think that “we’re going to put a committee together” — to make a recommendation on the fate of the Vance Monument — “and the head-scratching local folks didn’t know anything about Gov. Vance,” so they would just go along with whatever their elected leaders wanted.

He firmly contends that the commiteee’s recommendation to demolish the Vance Monument was a foregone conclusion — and its appointment was just “for show.”

Regarding the city’s Vance Monument task force, as well as all of the city’s and county’s leaders, “I’m 100 percent sure they didn’t now anything about Zebulon Vance” despite their support for demolition of the obelisk honoring him.

“That was the problem with the committee — they didn’t know anything about Zebulon Vance... Actions speak louder that words... If they had read about that man,” the monument would have ben preserved. “The deal was already made before they got there.”

Years ago, “I was president of the (local) NAACP — and not one time ever, ever, has one of those leaders, who were before me and after me, had anything to talk about regarding taking down the Vance Monument.”

Speaking more generally, over nearly six decades of his memory, Edgerton said, “Most of the black folks here never, never, never had a problem with the Vance Monument. It was a place of gathering.”

With one-party rule for years on City Council and just one Republican left on the county commissioners, the resulting political power without checks and balances can be channeled and widespread corruption hidden — and “they’re bringing cultural genocide right here to the City of Asheville, Edgerton said.

“Go down to Asheville High School and see how much you can learn about the War Between the States,” he said, challenging anyone in the community. He said the AHS history teachers would claim that the Civil War “was to free the slaves? That’s a lie.”

At that point, Edgerton, as in previous interviews with the Daily Planet, took a swipe at Gannett Co., headquartered in McClean, Va. (in the Washington, D.C. suburbs) and owner of (among others) all of the daily newspapers in Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina,  including Asheville Citizen Times, Hendersonville Times-News, Greenville (S.C.) News and the Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal.

He accused Gannett and its newspapers of being leftists with Northern sympahies, force-feeding its Southern readers with liberal-slanted news reports highlighted by an anti-Southern message, along with opinion pages loaded with leftist columnists.

Also, as in past interviews, Edgerton fired a verbal jab at the Asheville Citizen Times, in particular, calling it “that scalawag newspaper” and referring its No. 1 columnist, John Boyle, as “a disgraceful scalawag — I don’t give any credence to a yankee” like Boyle.

Besides his view that “yankees” control many of the South’s major newspapers and are brainwashing their readers against the South, Edgerton lamented that “you can’t go into the schools and learn anything about history,” either. In particular, he said, “The white man in the South has been under attack since Gen. (Robert E.) Lee signed that document at Appomattox.”

Edgerton also fired a salvo at UNC Asheville, noting that, although “they have some good people at UNCA, they’re cowards, too... You’re expelled from the college if you say, ‘All lives matter!’

“The University of North Carolina is not above law — and neither is City Council and that (Buncombe) county commission.”

Then, taking aim at Darin Waters, Ph.D., a black Asheville native who is an assistant professor of history and executive director of the Office of Community Engagement at UNCA, Edgerton said, “I’m not very impressed with some of those so-called ‘scholars’” at UNCA. “It don’t mean a thing when they have ‘tunnel vision.’”

Further, he said of Waters, “I’m not impressed” when, he, as a history professor, contends “that one side is always these evil white folks in the Southland of the America,” when in Edgerton’s experience, he has seen good and bad in every person and every race.

To Waters, “I’d like to say, ‘Talk about everyone who was involved in the institution of slavery” through history, which Edgerton says, included all races, not just black victimization. But that universal aspect of slavery, failling to fit the progressive narrative, never is brought up among certain “scholars,” Edgerton charged.

“But,” speaking for himself, Edgerton said,“by gosh, I’m so glad my folks ended up in the Southland of America, rather than in Africa. I’m way better off here.”

In brief, Edgerton said, “Waters? He’s got an ‘agenda’ and he’s following the left-wing narrative” in Asheville’s one party-system.

The “back story” behind the Vance Monument demolition, Edgerton reiterated, is it is an effort by leftists to show their power and win the hearts — and, most importantly, votes — of local blacks by promoting a false narrative that Vance was an awful person..

“I’m tired of them using black folks as their weapon of choice... It’s Southern cultural genocide,” Edgerton said. “They lie when they say what they’ll do for black folks. They NEVER do anything for black folks. It’s all a lie.”

As for the question of why blacks seem to go for it, Edgerton said, “They don’t know what to do. Most of these black folks just want to get on with their lives.

“That’s not what we’re here for” — to be hoodwinked by liberal whites, he said. “They (leftist whites) think black folks in this town are stupid. Black folks in this town aren’t stupid. They (the leftists) know good and well they don’t have the resources for black people... They couldn’t even afford to ‘reparate’ — or pay reparations.”

Beyond that, Edgerton said “there’s no such things as ‘the black community’ in Asheville any more,” given the gentrification that is going on. He lives in West Asheville, where “these people come (move) here with their ill-gotten gains to change our community….”

As for solutions to the many problems he sees, Edgerton said a starting point would be for everyone around the Asheville area to read the book “The Scattered Nation,” which Edgerton calls Vance’s “best lecture,” to get a better understanding of the man and his ideas. “After you read that, you’d have a whole different impression.”

He also suggested reading books that present “all sides” about Vance — “and the same with Robert E. Lee and other Southerners” to have a more accurative view of them.

Edgerton also lamented the fate of Black History Month. “What a disgrace Black History Month is,” he said. “It’s beat-up-on-the-whites-in-the-South month. I’m disgusted.” Edgerton contended that people are people — and that it is just as inaccurate to blindly label all Southern whites as bad as it is to label all blacks as bad.

“There is a war on the Southern white man — and on black people, too, especially black people who were loyal to the South” during the Civil War, Edgerton contended. “This is our (black folks’) homeland as well as it is for the white folks around here. It’s Southern cultural genocide” that is happening. “It’s a noose around the necks of the people who respect and love the Constitution.

“Reparations are due to Judeo-Christian white and black people of the Southland — and now we need to give it back to them,” using legal means, even though many in positions of authority have quit the law… The (new) Democrat Party is influencing things that many are not aware of” — and it needs to be stopped, Edgerton warned.