Democrat Virginia governor Ralph Northam, caught in scandal after I published a photo from his medical school yearbook page showing a man in blackface and another man in a Ku Klux Klan hood (prompting multiple confirmations from Northam that he was in the photo), is the descendant of slave owners.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported in 2017:
“He recently called his father, retired Judge Wescott Brownlee Northam, to ask.
“The news that my ancestors owned slaves disturbs and saddens me, but the topic of slavery has always bothered me,” Ralph Northam said in an interview. “My family’s complicated story is similar to Virginia’s complex history. We’re a progressive state, but we once had the largest number of slaves in the union.”…
Wescott Northam’s father, Thomas Long Northam, also was a judge and died when Wescott was 14. All the Northams before him were farmers, Wescott Northam said. Wescott’s grandfather was Levi Jacob Northam, and Levi’s father was James Northam — the great-great-grandfather of Ralph Northam.
The slave schedules with the federal census in 1850 and 1860 show James Northam owned eight slaves in 1860 and nine slaves in 1850. The 1860 slave schedule listed Levi Northam with three slaves, two of whom he employed but were owned by others. The schedules listed the slaves’ ages — from 1 year old to 60 — but not their names.”
Times-Dispatch passage ends
Democrat Virginia senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, joined by Congressman Bobby Scott, offered their review of governor Ralph Northam’s strange press conference in which he vowed to continue governing, despite not having any support. Northam has been undone by the “Blackface-Klan” photograph in his medical school yearbook — first published by Big League Politics.
Warner and Kaine were holding out to see if Northam could pull it together. No longer.