From: HK Edgerton
To: ‘wrbrody@jhu.edu’
Cc: ‘somadmiss@jhmi.edu’; ‘basilduke@comcast.net’
Subject: An Open Letter To the President and Board of Directors at John Hopkins University
Dear President Brody and Honorable Members of the Board of Directors,
For the past eight years whenever I’ve heard the name of John Hopkins University mentioned or have had the opportunity to mention it ; I have felt a sense of pride and warmth within myself that is very difficult to describe other than what we humans have deemed love. It was approximately eight years ago that I the Son of Slaves would receive an invitation from the Honorable G. Elliott Cummings , Adjutant of the Col. Harry W. Gilmore Camp # 1388 Sons of Confederate Veterans of the Great City of Baltimore, Maryland , to give the keynote speech for the annual Lee / Jackson ceremony held in Wyman Park .
I know that my mother who now resides in Heaven, and was the first Black woman to receive a Confederate State funeral , my father, the Honorable Rev. Roland Rogers Edgerton , my great, great grandmother Hattie who came to America as a slave to the Honorable T.R. Edgerton family in Rutherfordton County, North Carolina and all my ancestors beamed from the Pearly Gates with a great pride that I would stand at the double equestrian monument of two of not only the greatest Southern heroes alongside my baby brother Terry Lee and our Southern and Northern family and speak of these two devout Christian men in the honor of which they deserved.
It is important to note that before I would give my address, the Commander of the Union Sons of the War Between the States would present a heartfelt message of respect and honor to the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a resolution in support of the Battle Flag that then flew over the Capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina.
At the culmination of my speech, I would fulfill the dream of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King , and join the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners from both the North and South at the Table of Brotherhood in the Clipper Room on the campus of John Hopkins University. I wish that you and Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton, and Julian Bond, and Morris Dees, and George Bush, and Barrack Obama could have been there.
Even after all the wrong that we have endured in the Southland of America ; an unconstitutional war, invasion of our homeland, separation of our people during the horrors of reconstruction under military occupation, raping, looting, robbery, murder, the establishment of a public school system that would brand our honorable populous and the cause for which we stood as well as our symbols as evil, we still reach out our hands in reconcilement , and would hope that you would do the same as I so humbly appeal to you to rethink your decision to ban an honorable organization, its people as well as your own from a place that has assembled so much love when there were those who purported that there could be none.
Respectfully,
HK Edgerton
President
Southern Heritage 411
