Black Face

February 12, 2019

During the mid 1970’s, my wife and I both attended the University of Virginia. I attended the Darden School of Business, and she is a double ‘hoo, being both an undergraduate and graduate of the Education School. It was a decade before the Governor and and Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia went black face. I am not a Virginian, I cannot speak for Virginia, and I am not an apologist for Virginia’s history, but that is not the Virginia we experienced.

Being married and transplanted Yankees, we were removed from any student hijinks that may or may not have been occurring on frat row. I know there were stories about excessive drinking and partying, but that was all I was aware of. It sounded pretty normal. We interacted with professors, students, landlords, fellow workers, and neighbors, and never saw any overt signs of discrimination or inappropriate behavior. Charlottesville was more socially-stratified than what we were familiar with, coming from a solid, middle class community in the northeast. There was a clear divide between rich, poor, and students, but this seemed to be a legacy issue that needed to be remedied with progressive economic policies. Jefferson’s University was dealing with affirmative action issues as was almost every school in the country. I was at Harvard in the late Sixties when black enrollment increased dramatically from 3% to approximately 9%. UVA had its own issues.

My only exposure to the old South was through Beau, a fellow waiter at the restaurant we worked in to make ends meet. Beau was old enough to have lived through a time when the public schools in Charlottesville were segregated. This was an eye opener because segregation was an historic artifact we studied and not personally experienced. I do remember Boston’s attempts to integrate its public schools, Louise Day Hicks, and all of the hate and racial animosity that was generated. For a Northerner, de facto segregation was easier to deal with and overlook than real segregation.

I realize our experience was not the experiences that many African-Americans have experienced in Virginia and other places, but I am not qualified to speak to their life experiences. I can only try to describe what we saw and experienced. Clearly, there was unseemly behavior going on, but, from our vantage point, it was not apparent. I am not going to render an opinion on what Ralph Northam should do. All I am saying is that was not the Virginia we knew a decade earlier.