Does Ralph Northam know his great-grandfather was a white supremacist militant?
The great-grandfather of Virginia governor Ralph Northam was a leader of the Red Shirts, a quasi-Klan militant group known for terrorizing black Republicans during Reconstruction. Captain John Brownlee, who died in 1912, has his membership of the group mentioned in two obituaries. One obituary refers to ‘his valiant company of “Red Shirts,”’ and that ‘he did as much to redeem his country from Radical rule and tyranny as any other man in upper Carolina.’ The other obituary states that he ‘took a very active part in the red shirt times of ’76, being captain of one of the Abbeville companies.’ [caption id="attachment_10406766" align="alignnone" width="416"] An obituary to Capt. John E.
