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The Confederate flag has been getting some burn in the press lately, thanks to Kanye West‘s attempt to make it fashionable. Yeezy doesn’t have anything on a Black man so devoted to the Confederacy that he and other South Floridians are attempting to block a monument honoring Union soldiers from the Civil War by any means.

As reported by the News Service of Florida, the town of Lake City was the site for the only major battle of the Civil War in the state. The state’s park system has a bid in the works to place a Union monument at nearby Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park, causing over 100 citizens to protest at a town hall meeting Monday (December 2) evening joined by H.K. Edgerton, the Black man in question.

At one point Edgerton waved a large Confederate flag and urged the crowd to sing “I Wish I Was In Dixie” which was made popular during blackface minstrel shows of the 19th Century. The song’s lyrics mock the vernacular of  freed slaves in the South pining to return to their former master’s plantations. The song is considered an anthem of the Confederacy.

From the News Service of Florida:

Passions ran high, at one point erupting in a spontaneous chorus of “Dixie” led by a black man, H.K. Edgerton, who called Union soldiers rapists and wielded his large Confederate flag like a conductor’s baton as the audience sang.

“Putting a Union monument at Olustee would be like placing a memorial to Jane Fonda at the entrance to the Vietnam memorial,” said Leon Duke, a wounded veteran.

Edgerton, a North Carolina native, was also joined by Florida Rep. Dennis Baxley, a Republican who has the distinction of being one of being one of the main author’s for the state’s controversial “stand your ground” law.

Uncle Ruckus would be proud, no?

Hit the jump to see a 2010 video of H.K. Edgerton and his customary Confederate flag.

[Gawker & WUFT]

Photo: WUFT

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