EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the response of Asheville native and (nearly lifelong) resident H.K. Edgerton to the planned vote by the Jacksonville (Fla.) City Council to rename Confederate Street to Frazier Plaza to honor what Edgerton termed “a George Floyd-like thug.” The vote on the renaming — originally planned for Aug. 27 — did not occur, but is likely to be held in the near future, a Jacksonville official told the Daily Planet on Sept. 20.

It is unfortunate that the City of Jacksonville — in the state (Florida) that was the third to secede from the Union — has quickly become a leader in the eradication of our “honorable Southern heritage and history.” 

Sadly and falsely, Jacksonville has used its black citizenry — whose ancestors earned a place of honor alongside their Southern white family on the field of battle and at their homeplaces — as justification.

In 1867 (during the Reconstruction era), the North established the public school system and sent its Northern teachers into the South — and they did everything to discredit the Southern white man to his children (calling them “traitors” and “insurrectionists”) and to divide Southern blacks and Southern whites with their false teaching — something that the Honorable Major- General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne said they (the Yankees) would do if they won the (Civil) War.

And here we are in August 2024 with the poverty pimps, white-folk-guilters and Southern-haters attacking the name of a street bearing the signage of “Confederate Street” with no consideration that, before the constitutionally established Confederate States of America was formed in 1861, the United States was a federal union of states controlled by the federal government in Washington, D.C.

The nation was popularly known as a Confederacy, and its first constitution — adopted by the Continental Congress on Nov. 15, 1777 — was the Articles of Confederation.

I truly wonder what Dr. Alexander Darnes, Christopher Columbus Quarls or the Honorable Napoleon Nelson would think about this tomfoolery....

                  H.K. Edgerton

Ashevillle

Chairman, Board of Advisors Emeritus ,Southern Legal Resource Center

Member, Save Southern Heritage Florida

Honorary Life Member, Bradford Rose Camp 1638, Sons of Confederate Veterans

Honorary Life Member, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia Orders of the Confederate Rose

Honorable Life Member, Augusta Jane Evans Wilson Chapter 2640 United Daughters of the Confederacy

Honorary Associate Member, Abner Baker Chapter 1404 United Daughters of the Confederacy

 EDITOR’S NOTE: At the end of his column (sent to the Daily Planet via email), Edgerton included a link that featured the following message:

Tell Jacksonville: No street names for thugs

Send a message to the City Council now

“A bill was submitted to City Council to rename Confederate Street in Springfield after Jacksonville so-called ‘civil rights activist’ Ben Frazier.

“The bill will come up for a vote on the evening of Tuesday, August 27!

“The bill, submitted by Councilman Jimmy Peluso, would rename Confederate Street to Frazier Place.

“What message is naming this street sending to young black men? This is no better than building a statue to George Floyd!

“Aside from a slew of criminal traffic complaints filed against him over the years, Frazier was sentenced to 18 months in prison (DOC 292917) after pleading guilty to a second-degree felony grand theft back in 1998.

“Frazier was also arrested in the 1990s for petty rheft, a second-degree felony for robbery, and for solicitation of prostitution.

“In addition, Frazier was arrested in 2004 for DUI, DUI with Damage, and reckless driving.

“There’s more.

“Frazier has also been arrested for trespass in structure or conveyance, resisting officer w/o violence and disrupting the Jacksonville City Council itself....”

— Save Southern Heritage Florida