It's Time for Virginia's Black Leaders to Speak Up, and Tell Northam to Step Down
In a nutshell, Virginia is not a state where we can tolerate even the hint of a “racist” Governor.
Virginia is where America started in 1607. It is the colony that birthed all the other twelve. It is where American slavery began. In fact, this year the Commonwealth will remember, discuss, commemorate and dissect the 400-year anniversary of the birth of slavery in Virginia in 1619. It is an important discussion that we must have if we are ever to fully grasp the impact, the moral stain and human devastation left on Africans who came here against their will, and became African Americans, who had to fight for equality and acceptance in a nation they built for free.
Virginia is the birthplace of great American Presidents and founding fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison, James Monroe. All slave owners. Ours is a state like none other. This was Robert E. Lee’s home. This was the capital of the confederacy during the Civil War in Richmond. Ours is where openly racist young white men bearing torches marched and rioted in the city of Charlottesville, leaving one young woman dead. That happened in 2017, not 1967. Ours is the state that forbade a white man and a black woman, Richard and Mildred Loving, from “loving” one another. And it took the United States Supreme Court to strike down Virginia’s miscegenation laws and declare that marriage is a fundamental right not to be usurped by color, or creed.