J. Arthur Bloom

The First Lady of Virginia, Pam Northam, wife of Ralph, got herself in hot water this week for handing out cotton to black students while they were on a tour. But the Northams have form when it comes to messy race relations. There’s the whole blackface or KKK costume school photograph business. Then there’s the blacking up as Michael Jackson thing, which Ralph admitted to. Oh, and Ralph Northam’s family owned at least 84 slaves. Northam maintains that he learned about his family’s slave ownership in 2017. That story is harder to believe once you see that three out of the four grandparental lines of his family owned slaves. Two branches owned at least two dozen. Let’s take a tour of the family genealogy.

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.

Donald Trump celebrated the confirmation of the second Supreme Court justice of his presidency at the Kansas Expocentre in Topeka on Saturday evening, in a typically boisterous rally meant to boost Republicans running in the state. But all is not well in the land of Oz. Kansas, thought to be a deep-red state which went for Trump in 2016 by more than 20 per cent, nonetheless is posing problems for GOP candidates running in November. The legacy of former governor Sam Brownback, one of the least popular governors in the nation, may be having an impact on the race, despite having left office in January to become Trump’s Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.

“This ministry is the purest ministry I’ve ever witnessed and I have learned more about the love of Jesus in the past few years than I did in my entire life. I accredit Johnny and Hepzibah’s prayers and friendship for helping me through many tough battles - both personally and politically. God has used them in my family and I’s life mightily and I am thankful for that.” So says the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. Or at least that’s what Hepzibah Nanna and Johnny Matthes say he said, on the website of their ministry, The Lion Triumphs.