Photo: Steve Helber/Pool/Getty
The wife of embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has found herself in a scandal of her own after the mother of a local African-American student claimed the state’s first lady asked her daughter to hold raw cotton on a recent tour of the governor’s mansion.
Leah Dozier Walker, a Virginia state employee, wrote in aletter to lawmakersthat her eighth-grade daughter Alexandra took a Senate Page trip to the residence on Feb. 21, but the tour alongside the governor and Mrs. Northam “left her upset and deeply offended.”
Walker — who oversees the Office of Equity and Community Engagement at Virginia’s Education Department, according toThe Washington Post— said Mrs. Northam asked Alexandra and two of her fellow pages, the only black pages in the program, to hold cotton as they toured the Historic Kitchen of the Executive Mansion, a cottage that used to house the governor’s slaves.
An administration spokeswoman disputed Walker’s claim that the black students were singled out, telling theTimes-Dispatchthat Mrs. Northam encouraged everyone to touch the cotton.
“The First Lady did not single anyone out; she invited all of the pages to touch agricultural products and artifacts displayed in the Historic Kitchen as part of an educational tour,” the spokeswoman told the oulet.
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Mrs. Northam apologized for the incident in a statement to theDispatch.
“As First Lady, I have worked over the course of the last year to begin telling the full story of the Executive Mansion, which has mainly centered on Virginia’s governors,” she said. “The Historic Kitchen should be a feature of Executive Mansion tours, and I believe it does a disservice to Virginians to omit the stories of the enslaved people who lived and worked there — that’s why I have been engaged in an effort to thoughtfully and honestly share this important story since I arrived in Richmond.”
The first lady continued, “I have provided the same educational tour to Executive Mansion visitors over the last few months and used a variety of artifacts and agricultural crops with the intention of illustrating a painful period of Virginia history. I regret that I have upset anyone.”
“I am still committed to chronicling the important history of the Historic Kitchen, and will continue to engage historians and experts on the best way to do so in the future,” Mrs. Northam concluded.
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Another parent of a student present backed the spokesperson’s claim that Northam did not single out African-American students, according to thePost.
The incident comes weeks after Gov. Northam’s page in Eastern Virginia Medical School’s 1984 yearbook resurfaced, showing a man in blackface and another man in a KKK robe.
Gov. Northam, 59, initially apologized for the photo, saying, “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.”
However, he then reversed course amid calls for his resignation, claiming he wasnot either of the menin the photo.
“When I was confronted with the images yesterday, I was appalled that they appeared on my page,” Northam said during a press conference on Feb. 2, “but I believe then and now, that I am not either of the people in that photo.”
Despite mounting pressures to step down, Northam has said he willremain the governor of Virginiaand dedicate himself to regaining citizens’ trust.
“And there is a reason — I believe — that this happened,” he told Gayle King onCBS This Morningearlier this month. “That we are in a position to learn. I will focus on race and equity. That’s something that, for the next three years, is gonna be my commitment to Virginia. And I really think we can — make impactful changes.”
source: people.com
