Just days away from leaving office, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam says he is now “99% sure” of the identity of the man in blackface in his medical yearbook.
Two years after the photo surfaced, stirring controversy and calls for the Democrat to resign, Northam told the Washington Post that the person appearing in blackface, which ran under his page in a 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook, was a classmate and that the individual’s name was alphabetically “very close to mine.”
“He’s been talked to,” Northam said in the exit interview.
The photo in question shows two unidentified people, one man in blackface and another with a Ku Klux Klan hood on, at what appears to be a costume party.
Northam has been mired in controversy over the photo since it emerged in early 2019. Northam apologized initially, saying at the time that he was “deeply sorry” for appearing in the photograph, not specifying which individual he was in it.
Later, as he faced bipartisan calls for his resignation, he backtracked and denied that he was in the photo. He did admit, however, to another occasion in which he wore shoe polish to darken his skin for a Michael Jackson costume.
Northam said in the exit interview that he blames his initial response on being “stunned, confused, and an impulse to hurry to do something.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Since 2019, two investigations have been conducted, one by Northam’s political action committee and the other by EVMS, both reaching no conclusions.
Northam said in the interview that he plans to continue “building on the lessons he learned” as he turns over the office to Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin on Saturday.
