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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsVirginia first lady handed out cotton to AfricanAmerican children on slave cottage tour, mother says
(CNN)First lady of Virginia Pam Northam handed cotton to young African-American children on a tour of the governor's mansion and asked them to imagine being slaves in the fields, the mother of one of the children alleged.
Leah Dozier Walker, a state employee who is the director of the Office of Equity and Community Engagement at the Virginia Department of Education, wrote to Pam Northam's office on Monday alleging that on a tour for state Senate pages, the first lady spoke in the mansion's kitchen cottage -- where slaves used to work -- and gave black pages, including Walker's eighth grade daughter, pieces of cotton. Walker's daughter has said she did not take the cotton.
"During the tour of the Mansion Cottage, (Walker's daughter) and two of her (fellow) pages were asked to hold cotton that the First Lady retrieved from a bowl on a nearby table," Walker wrote in the letter. "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."
The interaction comes as Pam Northam's embattled husband, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, attempts to reconcile with African-American constituents amid scandal over a photo on his medical school yearbook page of a man in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Northam originally admitted to being in the photo, but then said he was not -- but that he did wear blackface once to impersonate Michael Jackson at a dance contest.
Leah Dozier Walker, a state employee who is the director of the Office of Equity and Community Engagement at the Virginia Department of Education, wrote to Pam Northam's office on Monday alleging that on a tour for state Senate pages, the first lady spoke in the mansion's kitchen cottage -- where slaves used to work -- and gave black pages, including Walker's eighth grade daughter, pieces of cotton. Walker's daughter has said she did not take the cotton.
"During the tour of the Mansion Cottage, (Walker's daughter) and two of her (fellow) pages were asked to hold cotton that the First Lady retrieved from a bowl on a nearby table," Walker wrote in the letter. "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."
The interaction comes as Pam Northam's embattled husband, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, attempts to reconcile with African-American constituents amid scandal over a photo on his medical school yearbook page of a man in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Northam originally admitted to being in the photo, but then said he was not -- but that he did wear blackface once to impersonate Michael Jackson at a dance contest.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/27/politics/va-first-lady-cotton-black-children/index.html
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Virginia first lady handed out cotton to AfricanAmerican children on slave cottage tour, mother says (Original Post)
spanone
Feb 2019
OP
hlthe2b
(102,283 posts)1. Clueless...It is as though they've had a frontal lobotomy.
spanone
(135,841 posts)2. where do these people come from and what century are they living in?
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)5. They really cannot help themselves.
It's bred into them every second of everyday in their insular world.
Even the white Southerners whom I consider fairly progressive have their unconscious lapses.
It's exasperating.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)3. How wonderful to be singled out that way by the First Lady . Why??
Walker wrote in the letter. "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."
My thoughts to the 3 children this was done to in a group tour.
GeorgeGist
(25,321 posts)4. inappropriate circumstance
KG
(28,751 posts)7. don't understand the cotton thing. I always thought of ol Virginny as a tobacco state