Less than eight months ago, after delivering a speech to a room full of educators about teaching strategies to help educators acknowledge and heal from a history of racism in education, I took a seat to hear the Gov. Ralph Northam speak ... After the event, we shared an intimate moment where he mentioned that he played basketball in a desegregated school during a troubling time in Virginia’s past. He mentioned that his high school graduating class was mostly African American. He told me that his experiences during desegregation shaped him and his outlook on educational equity. In that moment, I was convinced he was one of the good guys. This was a politician who understood how race and class could not be swept under the rug and needed to be faced head on in order to provide a sound education for all young people ... I focused on the story of a young white boy in a mostly black school who was struck by inequity and injustice. That boy went on to become a doctor and then a military officer and then a governor who used his platform to fight for those who he had seen being wronged.
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On Friday night, as news broke about the pictures that were in Northam’s medical school yearbook, I was stunned. However, what struck me the most was not the pictures themselves, but that the pictures were carefully curated by the governor. As an adult, after what he witnessed with the desegregation of schools, those images were what he chose to represent who he is. He selected them like Barbara Rose John’s portrait. As I thought more deeply about the news story, I started wondering if he single handedly curated this yearbook page. The answer (contrary to what news reports are saying) is no. In many ways, the page from the yearbook was co-curated by this country. That medical school yearbook page is vintage Americana. America is white folks in blackface, Ku Klux Klan members, and white dudes with carefree poses in front of a classic Corvette. The Corvette is America’s sports car. The KKK is America’s hate group. Jim Crow is America’s legacy. In 1984, when that yearbook page was put together, an aversion for blackness and a celebration of white supremacy was so accepted, it wasn’t questioned by the medical school who put the yearbook together. This means that the underlying sentiment behind the picture was endorsed by an institution that abides by the Hippocratic Oath that all doctors take “…to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time” while not valuing the life of black people and not caring to gain their respect.
https://www.theroot.com/on-well-intended-white-folks-thoughts-on-virginia-gov-1832292286

Academic administrator and osteopathic physician Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee was born on June 1, 1942, in Detroit, Michigan, to Fred Ross, Sr. and Ernestine Moten, the oldest of six children. One of her younger sisters is entertainer Diana Ross and two of her brothers also pursued musical careers; one as a successful songwriter for Motown and one as a dancer with Diana Ross’ tours. Although Ross-Lee was originally interested in a career in show business, her interests soon turned to medicine. In 1960, Ross-Lee entered Wayne State University, where she studied biology and chemistry. After graduating in 1965, Ross-Lee briefly pursued a teaching career; as a member of the National Teacher Corps, she taught in Detroit Public Schools and earned her M.A. degree from Wayne State University.

In 1969, Ross-Lee’s focus returned to medicine, and she entered Michigan State University’s new College of Osteopathic Medicine. After graduation she opened a family practice in Detroit in 1973. She left private practice in 1983 and joined the U.S. Navy Reserves as a physician and became a professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Family Practice. Ross-Lee became a consultant on education in the health professions in 1984 for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 1990, Ross-Lee served as a community representative on the Governor of Michigan’s Minority Health Advisory Committee. Ross-Lee, already chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Michigan State University, received a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship also in 1991, which allowed her to spend a year working as a legislative assistant for health in the office of Senator Bill Bradley. After the fellowship, Ross-Lee returned to Michigan State University as an associate dean for health policy in the College of Osteopathic Medicine.

In 1993, Ross-Lee was named dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio University. She became the first African American woman to be dean of a medical school and one of only a handful of female deans in the country. After a notable career in Ohio, Ross-Lee was appointed vice president for health sciences and medical affairs at the New York Institute of Technology in 2001 and one year later, she became dean of the school’s College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Ross-Lee has lectured extensively and written many scholarly articles on osteopathic medicine. She is a strong advocate for the profession and its preservation. Ross-Lee has been active in the American Osteopathic Association, the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, the National Osteopathic Medical Association and the Association for Academic Health Centers. She has been a captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve Medical Corps, and she and her husband, Edmond Beverly, have raised five children, all of whom have pursued professional careers.
https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/dr-barbara-ross-lee-41