ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Harold Kenneth “H.K.” Edgerton, former president of the Asheville branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a vocal advocate for the preservation of Confederate history, has passed away at the age of 77.
According to an obituary posted on Facebook, Edgerton passed away peacefully in his sleep on Sunday, Jan. 18 at the Asheville Veterans Administration Medical Center in Asheville. He is survived by his brothers, Rashad Hasan of Stone Mountain, Georgia, Terry Lee Edgerton of Asheville, his sister, Obra Elaine Hall of Asheville, as well as several nieces and nephews.
Edgerton was born in Asheville on Feb. 18, 1948, and lived in the city for most of his life as an active member of the community.
Comments under many social media posts about Edgerton’s death described him as a kind, knowledgeable historian of the American South and an upstanding leader among his friends and neighbors. Edgerton was a Vietnam veteran, serving in the United States Army from 1969-72, and an advocate for youth sports organizations, founding the Boys and Girls Golf Team at Shiloh Community Center and coaching basketball at the Oakley School.
Edgerton served as the chapter president for the Asheville NAACP from 1996 until December 1998 and made bids for Asheville mayor in 1995, 1997 and 2001, as well as Asheville City Council in 1999.
Edgerton was an outspoken proponent for the preservation of Confederate history and iconography in the South, making frequent appearances around Western North Carolina carrying a Confederate flag and wearing the grey uniform of the Confederacy. Between 2002 and 2003, the activist marched with flag and uniform the 1,385 miles between Asheville and Austin, Texas to protest the removal of plaques with the Confederate seal from Texas state buildings.
The politics of the former NAACP president were not without detractors. In February 1998, Edgerton drew criticism after taking a meeting with Kirk Lyons, a lawyer with ties to prominent white supremacists. The lunch resulted in a photo of Edgerton, Lyons and white separatist Neill Payne wearing napkins over their heads in an imitation of Ku Klux Klan hoods. To Edgerton, however, the meeting and subsequent conversations with Lyons were representative of his efforts to find common ground across racial, political and ideological lines, not an endorsement of Lyons’ calls for white separatism.
“‘Kirk Lyons and his associates have no doubt in their minds how [the Asheville NAACP] feels about hate groups, our total abhorrence of the Ku Klux Klan,'” Edgerton was quoted in a March 28, 1998 story in the Asheville Citizen-Times. “‘None of these things were compromised in that meeting.'”
“‘History will not say that Edgerton did not roll up his sleeves and look the devil in the eye,'” the activist said.