Northam’s Medical School Yearbook Staffer: Photo ‘Not a Mix-Up’
Peter D'Abrosca
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A former yearbook staffer at Eastern Virginia Medical School said that the blackface/KKK photo on the page of Ralph Northam, the Democratic Governor of Virginia, is almost certainly him.
“In my personal knowledge and the people I knew that were working on the staff, we went through great pains to make sure that there was not a mix-up,” William Elwood told WHSV. Elwood was a page designer for the 1984 yearbook.
Northam, after first accepting responsibility and apologizing the photos Friday night, later denied that he was in the photo at a bizarre Saturday press conference. He did voluntarily admit, though, that he had worn blackface at a Michael Jackson dance competition in San Antonio, Texas.
“Each student was allowed to submit a certain number of pictures that they wanted to appear on the page with their graduation photograph,” Elwood said. “They chose their own pictures, they were submitted in a sealed envelope with their name on them, and the only time that envelope was opened was when the layout was done on their page.”
Elwood explained that there were other blackface photos in the same yearbook, claiming that nobody “thought of that as a significant problem back then.”
Northam has refused to resign from his post while his Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax, is embattled in a sexual assault scandal, a story broken by Big League Politics Sunday night.
Fairfax has denied the allegations, saying that he did have sex with his accuser Vanessa Tyson, but that it was consensual.
Tyson has reportedly hired the same law firm retained by Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct during his confirmation hearings in September.
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