Virginia’s Out-going Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam once again denied this week that he was the man seen wearing blackface in a resurfaced photo from his medical yearbook, claiming he is “99% sure” who the man is.
Northam told the Washington Post that he is confident the man seen wearing blackface in a 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook was a classmate of his—someone whose name was alphabetically “very close to mine.”
“He’s been talked to,” Northam claimed.
Which one is Governor Ralph Northam-blackface or kkk member? pic.twitter.com/sXUFnGkWZ5
— H. C. C. (@MollySam1986) January 5, 2022
The photo shows two men, one wearing blackface, and the other wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, at what appears to be a costume party.
The lameduck governor also claimed he knows who the person in the Klan robe is, but said they refused to cooperate with investigators.
“We got as close as we could,” he claimed.
Northam initially apologized for the photo, saying in 2019 that he was “deeply sorry” for it.
But as he began to face bipartisan calls for his resignation, he backtracked and denied that he had ever been in the photo.
He did, however, admit that he put shoe polish on his face to darken his skin for a Michael Jackson costume.
When asked why he issued an apology if it wasn’t him in the photo, Northam told the Post that he was “stunned, confused,” and had an “impulse to hurry to do something.”
“I think people needed to hear from me, and I wish I had more time before I came out that night,” he said. “If I had it to do over again I’d have tried to take a little more time.”
