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Virginia Governor Ralph Norton must resign. For him to remain as Governor will embolden racists to perpetuate racism in its vilest form.
Recently, images of Ralph Northam's Eastern Medical School yearbook surfaced showing images of an unidentified person in a blackface and an unidentified person in a Ku Klux Klan hood on Northam's page in the school's 1984 yearbook. At that time Northam was twenty-five years old.
When I, this writer, was twenty-five years old I was pastor of the Bell Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and secretary of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) that was formed four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for having refused to give her bus seat to a white person. That year Martin Luther King, Jr., was elected president and I was elected secretary of the MIA that provided structure for and directed the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Bell Street Baptist Church, three other churches and two parsonages were bombed by racists depicted in the images of blackface and Ku Klu Klan displayed in the yearbook.
In 1984, thirty years after the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" in the schools was unconstitutional, Ku Klux Klaners and other white racists engaged in massive resistance in an atempt to prevent school integration that delayed school integration until the mid-sixties in Virginia.
In 1984 Jesse Jackson became the first African American to engage in a nationwide presidential campaign in the United States. He received 3,282.21 primary votes (18.2) pecent of the Democrats' votes. His effort made it possible, so twenty-five years later, Barack Obama would become the first African American President
It is unthinkable that in 1984, twenty-five year- old Northam, a pediatrician, was engaged in racist behavior as displayed in the image of blackface and Ku Klux Klan in the school's yearbook.
As a pediatrician one can only wonder if he delivered or treated African American infants, and if so, were they dead on arrival or shortly after birth? This certainly would have been something that Ku Klux Klaners would not have hesitated to do, just as they have done in lynching young people and adult African Americans.
Eastern Medical School must also bear blame for allowing images of blackface and Ku Klux Klan to be dsplayed in the school's yearbook. At that time, I ask, was there a single African American attending the school? I venture to say there was none.
RALPH NORTHAM MUST RESIGN IMMEDIATELY AS GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA. Moreover, for him to remain as Govenor will embolden white supremacists to engage in similar behavior and perpetuate racism. Northam's apology and good works are not sufficient to justify him remaining as the Governor of Virginia.
The photo of the Bell Street Baptist Church that I served as pastor before, during, and after the Montgomery Bus Boycott appears on Facebook: facebook.com/uriah.j.fields
Copyright 2019 by Uriah J. Fields
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Perhaps, now, more people will come to recognize that Democrats are the racists in America and have been from the beginning. Perhaps, more will realize that Democrats are the party of division, tyranny, perversity and death. Perhaps, millions more will wake up and realize that Democrats have been lying to the American people for the past 50 years, and will now, Walk Away!
I grew up in the white North and found myself detesting what I considered "ignorant" jokes and characterizations of certain racial and ethnic groups. For example, while Polish Catholics were probably a majority in our hometown, they were often the brunt of jokes and would laugh along with jokes about dumb Polacks. To this day, Swedes still bear that stigma as well. But people of color were the least understood and that disturbed me.
I achieved the Order of the Arrow while at scout camp. Following Indian traditions, I was proud to have accomplished that high order. In 1976, at costume party I hosted for Halloween at my house, I dressed up as Yellow Feather and changed the color of my hands and face with some cheap makeup so that I had a ruddy complexion similar to Native Americans that I had seen in my travels. By dressing up as an Indian, I felt in no way that I was demeaning Indians, just playing the role of a woodsman for a night. By playing the role of someone we are not, we can gain insight into the character of who we are playing. Actors have often done that. Unfortunately, whites have played many roles that could have been played by ethnic people, but were not.
That same night, my younger brother came from his busing job at a local country club bringing with him a young black from Pittsburgh who was serving time at the Kennedy Center for murder, but working at the country club. They were going to a party of college students. My brother dressed as a fisherman with what he had at hand. The black guy had no costume, but got the idea to take one of my brother's sheets and become dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member. And he wrote on the front of the sheet, "Kill a N…" I wasn't shocked. I felt that it was his right to dress any way that he wanted for Halloween.
Ron