Ralph Northam’s page in the 1984 yearbook of Eastern Virginia Medical School has a photo of a man in blackface and another man in a Ku Klux Klan costume. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
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The racism was present the moment he took the stage.
Using something black to darken his face, Thomas Dartmouth Rice didn’t hold back in his singsong performances, which date to the 1830s. The white man danced like a buffoon and spoke with an exaggerated imitation of black slave vernacular to entertain his audiences.
His fictional character also had a name: “Jim Crow.”
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David Pilgrim, curator of the Jim Crow Museum in Michigan, noted how Jim Crow and other…
