Northam did appear at the 1619 commemoration in Virginia 

In February, Northam faced intense pressure to resign after a racist picture surfaced from his 1984 medical school yearbook page. He denied being in the picture but admitted to wearing blackface as a young man while portraying Michael Jackson at a dance party in the 1980s.

On Saturday, Northam said he has met with people around the state over the past several months to listen to views about inequities that still exist, prompting him to confront “some painful truths.”

“Among those truths was my own incomplete understanding regarding race and equity,” Northam said. “I have learned a great deal from those discussions, and I have more to learn, but I also learned that the more I know, the more I can do.”

Drummers perform in a drum call and parade of flags during the 2019 African Landing Commemorative Ceremony on Aug. 24, 2019 in Hampton, Va. The event marks the 400th arrival of the first African Slaves to English North America in 1619.Zach Gibson / Getty Images

The event was held on Chesapeake Bay, where ships traded men and women from what’s now Angola for supplies from English colonists. The landing in August 1619 is considered a pivotal moment that presaged a system of race-based slavery.

“The legacy of racism continues not just in isolated incidents, but as part of a system that touches every person and every aspect of our lives, whether we know it or not, and if we’re serious about righting the wrong that began here at this place we need to do more than talk,” Northam said. “We need to take action.”

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus and attended the event, said it was important to hear the truth about the nation’s past “not just the parts that make us feel good, but the difficult parts as well.”

“The sad thing about our nation and why we continue to have the issues we do is because we have denied part of our history, and I believe that if the entire nation could experience, could learn and understand our true and full history, we might not be witnessing the resurrection of hate,” Bass, a California Democrat, said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/virginia-gov-ralph-northam-pledges-new-black-history-education-n1046391

Northam is dealing with his blackface, Ivey has to deal with her blackface. Being dismissive is not the solution.

Thanks NCD. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans led the effort to make the myth of the Lost Cause gain traction. States Rights rather than slavery was the supposed cause of the war. All you have to do is read the statements on the reason states gave for secession and the right to maintain and expand slavery was front and center. There was even an effort to promote the idea that enslaved men fought for the Confederacy. I remember having a weeks long argument with someone who no longer posts at dagblog about the existence of black Confederates. It took weeks to convince that poster that o enslaved blacks were in the ranks of the Confederacy.

There is an excellent new book, “Searching for Black Confederates The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin exposes the lies.

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans’ gains in civil rights and other realms.

Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469653266/searching-for-black-confeder...

There is poor job of educating citizens about slavery and the Civil War.

The mission of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was very clear. Landrieu was clear

So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to historical malfeasance, a lie by omission. There is a difference, you see, between remembrance of history and the reverence of it. For America [and] New Orleans, it has been a long and winding road, marked by tragedy and triumph. But we cannot be afraid of the truth. As President George W. Bush said at the -- at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture (and I quote): “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and" it "corrects them.”

So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding each other.

If your basket is not loaded down with white supremacy eggs, you are not being truthful

The statues were about the Lost Cause.