First Lady Pam Northam handed the [[African-American]] daughter of a state employee a piece of [[cotton]]. According to ''[[The Washington Post]]'', Leah Dozier Walker—an employee at Virginia's Department of Education—wrote a letter to lawmakers and Gov. Ralph Northam's office describing Mrs. Northam's behavior during a tour her daughter took at the Governor's mansion. Northam asked Walker's daughter and two other African American students “if they could imagine what it must have been like to pick cotton all day” after passing a cotton sample to them inside a historic kitchen on the property. “I can not for the life of me understand why the first lady would single out the African American pages for this—or—why she would ask them such an insensitive question,” Walker wrote, referring to students who had served as pages during the state Senate.<ref>https://www.thedailybeast.com/wapo-gov-northams-wife-handed-cotton-to-black-kids-told-them-to-imagine-being-slaves</ref> | First Lady Pam Northam handed the [[African-American]] daughter of a state employee a piece of [[cotton]]. According to ''[[The Washington Post]]'', Leah Dozier Walker—an employee at Virginia's Department of Education—wrote a letter to lawmakers and Gov. Ralph Northam's office describing Mrs. Northam's behavior during a tour her daughter took at the Governor's mansion. Northam asked Walker's daughter and two other African American students “if they could imagine what it must have been like to pick cotton all day” after passing a cotton sample to them inside a historic kitchen on the property. “I can not for the life of me understand why the first lady would single out the African American pages for this—or—why she would ask them such an insensitive question,” Walker wrote, referring to students who had served as pages during the state Senate.<ref>https://www.thedailybeast.com/wapo-gov-northams-wife-handed-cotton-to-black-kids-told-them-to-imagine-being-slaves</ref> |