Racism and redemption: Virginia blackface row sparks national debate

Calls were mounting for Virginia's lieutenant governor to resign Saturday, at the tail end of an astonishing week that saw the state's top three elected officials - all Democrats - embroiled in potentially career-ending scandals fraught with questions of race, sex, and power. But since the Northam news broke, she said the staff for the university's student paper, The Cavalier Daily, had been "going through UVA's old yearbooks and trying to find these pictures to call themselves out for past racism". "They need to be taken seriously".

The 1998-99 Duke team was one of the most talented and highly touted teams in school history.

In his first interview since the release of a blackface photo in his medical school's yearbook, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam told the Washington Post Saturday that he vows to spend the remaining three years of his term pursuing "equity".

In an interview set to air Monday on "CBS This Morning", Northam touted his training as a physician as providing him the skills necessary to lead a reconciliation process in his state. He added: "That's why I'm not going anywhere".

Virginia House of Delegates Member Patrick Hope (D) said Friday he plans to initiate the impeachment of Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D).

After King asked him if he planned on stepping down, Northam described himself as a "leader" and argued that "Virginia needs someone that can heal". "But he sacrificed so much of his ability to govern effectively".

"The Lieutenant Governor of Virginia presides over the Virginia Senate and must be prepared to fill the role of Governor", they said.

Northam is now shrouded in criticism after photos from his medical school yearbook from 1984 emerged last week, showing someone wearing blackface posed alongside a person dressed as a KKK member. In his new claims, he said that he was in blackface at another time to portray singer Michael Jackson in a dance competition.

King also asked if the state's attorney general, Mark Herring, should resign after he too admitted to rocking a blackface costume.

Fairfax (D) has been accused by two women of sexual assault, the newest of which he said was "demonstrably false".

"If I had it to do over I would step back and take a deep breath", he said. "If these accusations are determined to be true, I don't think he's going to have any other option but to resign". Fairfax has asked the FBI to investigate the assault claims against him. Meredith Watson, a classmate of Fairfax's at Duke University, claims that he assaulted her in college in 2000 in an "attack [that] was premeditated and aggressive". It has been an especially devastating time for the great Commonwealth of Virginia.

Northam responds, "Yes. While we have made a lot of progress in Virginia - slavery has ended, schools have been desegregated, we have ended the Jim Crow laws, easier access to voting - it is abundantly clear that we still have a lot of work to do", Northam told King. Consequently, I call on all appropriate and impartial investigatory authorities, including the FBI, to investigate fully and thoroughly the allegations against me by Ms. Watson and Dr. Tyson.

In his comments to CBS, Northam stopped short of joining the growing chorus of leading Democrats saying that Fairfax needs to quit his post.

A man who was romantically involved with Tyson in the late 1990s said Thursday that she disclosed the childhood abuse to him during a conversation about why she found certain kinds of physical intimacy hard. White residents were more evenly divided, the poll found.