Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) is accompanied by his wife, Pam Northam, at a news conference in Richmond on Feb. 2, in which he refused calls to resign and disavowed a racist photo in his yearbook. Pam Northam is under fire for handing the African American daughter of a state employee raw cotton on a tour of the Executive Mansion and making a reference to slavery. (Steve Helber/AP)
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 raw cotton to her and another African American child and asked them to imagine being enslaved and having to pick the crop.
“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 Education Department, wrote Feb. 25 to lawmakers and the office of Gov. Ralph Northam (D).
“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.
