Wait, what?
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has denied he was in a racist photo that appeared in his 1984 student yearbook page even though he initially apologised for the photo.
The picture showed a man in blackface and another man in Ku Klux Klan robes.
Ralph Northam initially apologised for appearing in a photograph. In a video posted on Twitter, he said he could not “undo the harm my behaviour caused then and today” and labelled the photo “clearly racist and offensive.”
He then held a press conference the day after to say that he in fact was not one of the men in a photo from his university yearbook.
“In the hours since I made my statement yesterday, I reflected with my family and classmates from the time and affirmed my conclusion that I am not the person in that photo,” he told reporters, just one day after admitting he was in the photo.
“It has taken time to make sure that it’s not me but I’m convinced I’m not on that photo,” he said.
He said that he had blackened his face at a dance contest in San Antonio that same year and this was the source of his confusion. “It is because my memory of that is so vivid that I do not believe I am in the photo in the yearbook,” he said.
The images were first published by conservative website Big League Politics and were tweeted out by The Virginian-Pilot newspaper.
BREAKING: Gov. Ralph Northam yearbook page shows blackface and Klan photohttps://t.co/6A89ejp5Ho
— The Virginian-Pilot (@virginianpilot) February 1, 2019
