Gov. Ralph Northam Says He Is '99% Sure' Who's in Blackface in Racist Photo That Rocked Va. Politics

As he prepares to leave office on Saturday to make way for Republican Glenn Youngkin, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is reflecting on the hard lessons he's learned since a racist photo scandal erupted in 2019 and nearly ended his political career.

"I'm not sure I would have signed up for this experience, but it's really just opened my eyes," Northam tells The Washington Post in an interview for a story about how he managed — over the initial outrage — to turn his governorship around.

"The eyes can't see what the brain doesn't know. My brain knows a lot more right now than it did before February of 2019," Northam told the paper. "And I think that's — that's — that's a good thing."

Nearly three years ago, a photo surfaced from Northam's page in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook which showed two men — one in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan uniform — posing together.

In crisis mode, Northam, 62, immediately began making calls and meeting with Black leaders in Virginia. He released a statement and a video taking responsibility for the shocking image. As pediatric neurologist, he considered a return to practicing medicine, the Post reports.

Later, after consulting with friends and others from the medical school, Northam said he determined that he was not in fact one of the men in the photo and announced he would not step down despite widespread calls for him to resign.

"It has taken time for me to make sure that it's not me, but I am convinced, I am convinced that I am not in that picture," the governor said at an Executive Mansion press conference Feb. 2, 2019, though he did admit to separately darkening his skin with shoe polish as part of a Michael Jackson costume he wore for a dance contest in 1984.

A pair of investigations, including one by the medical school, were unable to determine the identity of the men in the photo but Northam now says he's "99% sure" of the identity of the man in blackface.

"He's been talked to," Northam said in his interview with the Post, adding that the man "was also in that medical school class" and has a name that is alphabetically "very close to mine." He also said he believes he knows the identity of the hooded figure in the photo, but that person would not cooperate in either investigation. The person who placed the yearbook photos was also uncooperative.

"We got as close as we could," Northam said.

Following the 2019 press conference, demands for the governor's resignation did not stop. But Northam made a promise that he would fight racial inequity for the remainder of his term, according to the Post.

That work involved what an aide described as "incredibly raw" meetings with Black leaders from politics, business, religion and activism from across the commonwealth.

"I have had to confront some painful truths," Northam said Aug. 14, 2019, in a speech on the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery with arrival of the first enslaved Africans at a port in the English colony of Virginia in 1619. "Among those truths was my own incomplete understanding regarding race and equity."

In the speech, Northam demonstrated some of what he learned on the months since the scandal, according to House Del. Delores McQuinn, a member of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus.

"He was the right man" to give that speech, McQuinn told the Post. "Here was a man, in many ways, that was at a vulnerable place in his life. … I looked for a wounded healer that could now take his experience and begin to create and build a bridge that would now help others again."

Northam acknowledged in the speech that racism is a "part of a system that touches every person and every aspect of our lives, whether we know it or not." He told the crowd, "Black history is American history."

He also formed commissions to remove racist language from Virginia's laws and to consider how African American history is taught in its schools. He appointed the first cabinet-level diversity officer and issued a slew of pardons to restore rights to more than 120,000 convicted felons, many of whom were Black.

Northam worked with Rita Davis, the first Black woman to serve as the governor's top attorney, to remove from state property a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond.

"Out of unfortunate events can come great things, and that's exactly what happened here," Cynthia Hudson, who led the effort to find racist language in Virginia's laws, told the Post. The photo scandal, she added, "reshaped the trajectory and the consequence of this administration."

One of those who called for Northam to resign in 2019, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, now believes the outgoing governor is the most consequential leader of the commonwealth in modern times, citing a long list of accomplishments to the Post.

Kaine said, "I'm glad he didn't listen to me."