Virginia medical school speaks on racist yearbook photos
Officials from Eastern Virginia Medical School, which Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam attended, are speaking Tuesday about the racist photos that appeared on Northam’s yearbook page, as well as on others over the years.
The school has faced an onslaught of criticism since Friday, when Northam’s page in the medical school’s 1984 yearbook was published, showing one person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan costume. Northam initially apologized for appearing in the photo and then the next day said that he did not believe he was either of the two figures in the photo.
He also attributed the appearance of the photo on his page to someone else’s mistake and said he had not seen the yearbook, which he said he did not purchase, until last week. He has been fending off calls to resign by the NAACP as well as national and state Democrats, who swiftly condemned the use of the photo.
The president of the school, Richard Homan, apologized on Saturday, saying, “We share the outrage, alarm and sadness voiced by our alumni, the press and many on social media regarding the picture published in the 1984 student yearbook.” He called the photo “shockingly abhorrent and absolutely antithetical to the principles, morals and values we hold and espouse….Racism and discrimination in any form is not acceptable.”
Since Friday, another classmate of Northam’s was found to be wearing a blackface costume in the same yearbook. According to CBS4 in Denver, Parkview Hospital, in Pueblo, said that Dr. Stephen Nafziger appears in blackface in costume as part of the group The Supremes.
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