By Gregory S. Schneider and Laura Vozzella | Washington Post
A Virginia state employee has complained that her
eighth-grade daughter was upset during a tour of the historic governor's
residence when first lady Pam Northam handed a ball of cotton to her and
another black child and asked them to imagine being enslaved and having to pick
cotton.
"The Governor and Mrs. Northam have asked the
residents of the Commonwealth to forgive them for their racially insensitive
past actions," Leah Dozier Walker, who oversees the Office of Equity and
Community Engagement at the state Department of Education, wrote Feb. 25 to
lawmakers and to the office of Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat.
"But the actions of Mrs. Northam, just last week, do
not lead me to believe that this Governor's office has taken seriously the harm
and hurt they have caused African Americans in Virginia or that they are
deserving of our forgiveness," she wrote.
The incident highlights the scrutiny and doubt that
envelope the governor as he tries to push past racist incidents from his past
and ignore continued calls for his resignation. His first attempt at a promised
"reconciliation tour" had a hiccup last week, when the student
government at Virginia Union University asked him not to attend a black history
celebration there.
And though Northam has vowed to dedicate the remaining
three years of his term to racial equity, members of the Virginia Legislative
Black Caucus say he is not doing enough to help disadvantaged minorities in the
state budget.
Northam has been under intense scrutiny since Feb. 1,
when a photo came to light from his 1984 medical school yearbook page that
depicted one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan robes. Northam
initially took responsibility for the picture; a day later, he said it wasn't
him in the photo, but he admitted that he darkened his face to imitate Michael
Jackson in a dance contest later that same year.
All of the state's top Democrats — including the Virginia
Legislative Black Caucus — have called on Northam to step down. Pressure to
leave has eased a bit because Virginia's other two top leaders became embroiled
in controversies of their own shortly after Northam's scandal broke. Lt. Gov.
Justin Fairfax has denied allegations of sexual assault from two women, and
Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface for a college party
in 1980.
The complaint about the tour is the first time the
scandal's stain has spread to Pam Northam, who insiders say has been a strong
advocate behind the scenes for her husband to stay in office and work to clear
his name.
"I regret that I have upset anyone," Pam
Northam said Wednesday in a statement emailed by the governor's spokeswoman,
Ofirah Yheskel.
The tour took place Feb. 21, when the Northams hosted a
traditional gathering of about 100 young people who had served as pages during
the state Senate session, which would end that weekend.
Trained docents often lead tours of the Executive
Mansion, which was built with slave labor in 1813 and is the oldest active
governor's residence in the country. In this case, Pam Northam — a former
middle school teacher — took groups of pages to an adjacent cottage that had
long ago served as a kitchen.
In front of a huge fireplace with iron cooking
implements, Pam Northam held up samples of cotton and tobacco to a group of
about 20 children and described the enslaved workers who picked it.
"Mrs. Northam then asked these three pages (the only
African American pages in the program) if they could imagine what it must have
been like to pick cotton all day," Walker wrote. "I can not for the
life of me understand why the First Lady would single out the African American
pages for this — or — why she would ask them such an insensitive
question."
The governor's office, which did not make Pam Northam
available for an interview, said she simply handed the cotton to whoever was
nearby and wanted everyone to note the sharpness of the cotton boll, to imagine
how uncomfortable it would've been to handle all day.
Walker could not immediately be reached for comment. In a
letter written by Walker's daughter to Pam Northam, which was included as an
attachment to the email to lawmakers, the young girl said she did not take the
cotton, but her friend did. "It made her very uncomfortable," the
girl wrote.
"I will give you the benefit of the doubt, because
you gave it to some other pages," the girl wrote to Pam Northam. "But
you followed this up by asking: 'Can you imagine being an enslaved person, and
having to pick this all day?' which didn't help the damage you had done."
Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar said "we received
no complaints" after the mansion visit. She said the only thing the pages
were buzzing about afterward was the fact that one of the pages was dehydrated
and fainted during the tour of the kitchen.
Sen. William Stanley (R., Franklin), whose daughter served
as a page this session, was among the group that the first lady took to the
kitchen. Stanley declined to make his daughter available for an interview, but
he said she told him that Pam Northam offered the cotton to all of the
students.
"The first lady's intent was to show the horrors of
slavery and to make sure everyone felt the pain they felt in some small
measure," he said. Two days later, Stanley's wife got the same tour from
Pam Northam and found it "poignant," he said.
Del. Marcia Price (D., Newport News), a member of the
black caucus, praised the student “for her courage in speaking out when a lot
of times African Americans have not always had the opportunity to confront
offenses in this way.”
She said Pam Northam used poor judgment in her presentation
to the children.
"The cotton itself is a symbol of murder, rape,
displacement and the radiating effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade that
black Virginians are still experiencing today," Price said. "I don't
know that you have to have actual cotton handed to the children to understand
slavery was bad."
Former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his wife,
Dorothy, had begun restoring the kitchen building as a way to highlight the
service of generations of enslaved workers whose names were mostly lost to
history. The McAuliffes had passages from letters written by some of those
enslaved workers engraved on tablets and mounted on the garden wall outside.
Northam’s office said the first lady has met with experts
at Monticello to learn about how to present the history of enslaved workers. At
a luncheon for state legislators’ spouses a week ago, Pam Northam invited a
speaker from Monticello to deliver a program titled “How Oral History Gave
Voice to Monticello’s Enslaved Community.”
In her statement, Pam Northam said she would continue
working to “thoughtfully and honestly” tell the story of the mansion’s enslaved
workers. “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,” she said.
