Virginia Sen. Tommy Norment was an editor for VMI yearbook filled with racist photos and slurs

[Judi Lynn]

Source: The Virginian-Pilot

Virginia Sen. Tommy Norment was an editor for VMI yearbook filled with racist photos and slurs
By Katherine Hafner and Elisha Sauers
Staff writers
Feb 7, 2019 Updated 5 min ago

A Virginia Military Institute yearbook overseen by future state Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment in 1968 features a host of racist photos and slurs, including blackface.

The revelation about one of Virginia's most powerful Republicans comes as the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general are facing calls to resign over their own admissions they wore blackface as young men.

Norment, R-James City County, was managing editor of The Bomb publication that year. He went to VMI in Lexington after graduating from James Blair High School in Williamsburg and has been a state senator since 1992.

On one page of the yearbook, a student poses in blackface, surrounded by others in costumes at a party. Another page features a photo of two men in blackface holding a football.

. . .



Steve Earley/Staff
Virginia Senator Thomas K. Norment Jr. photographed during a Senate Committee for Courts of Justice hearing on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2019.

Read more: https://pilotonline.com/news/government/politics/virginia/article_d4ce7700-2ae3-11e9-ace9-ff7814740140.html

[LisaM]

1. What is it with this school?

Or maybe it's the state of Virginia, which has a really complicated past.

[Aristus]

2. VMI is the Southern West Point.

Confederate officers who didn't attend West Point before the war were either promoted from the ranks or attended VMI. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that 'Putting Down Slave Insurrections' was on the curriculum of VMI back in the day...

[rpannier]

4. I thought the Citadel was bad

With the battle flag and dixie. But VMI? Damn....

[Aristus]

8. The Citadel, too.

I knew a guy when I was in the Army who attended the Citadel. He did a hitch as an enlisted man before taking his commission, which I thought was a smart thing to do.

He was African-American, but I don't know what, if any, hazing or discrimination he may have faced there. He did have a brand on each arm that he says he got at the Citadel. I don't know if it was hazing or a prescribed ritual there.

[TeamPooka]

3. Just start pulling all the yearbooks of every GOP southern politician....

[rpannier]

5. Seems if you start with VMI yearbooks you'll get most of the racists

[lagomorph777]

6. That's what I'm talkin' about. Time to smear some Repiglicans with blackface.

If our "enlightened Dems" were doing blackface, imagine what real troglodyte Repiglicans were doing at the time.

[riversedge]

7. When a reporter asked Norment to talk about the yearbook Thursday, the majority leader said, "The on

Sooner or later, you will have to speak Mr. Norment


...........When a reporter asked Norment to talk about the yearbook Thursday, the majority leader said, “The only thing I’m talking about today is the budget.”

[zentrum]

9. This is a problem for the entire country because

...we refuse to do truth and reconciliation trials and reparations. Virginia is the tip of the spear, to use a RW meme, of a deeply racist history.

Here is the truth about Virginia, from Wikipedia:

There are at least 223 public spaces with Confederate monuments in Virginia,more than in any other state.Virginia also has numerous schools, highways, roads and other public infrastructure named for Confederates. Lee-Jackson Day is a State holiday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Confederate_monuments_and_memorials_in_Virginia

Every person growing up in VA is steeped in this hideous, dangerous crap.

The yearbook doesn't begin to tell the whole ugly story.

[IronLionZion]

10. And we finally get to a Republican

He should be pressured to resign too.

[onenote]

11. As I predicted:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11783577

[workinclasszero]

12. Well how about that?

Of course white racism is a badge of honor for Trumpian GOPers but it sure gives dems ammunition when the GOP tries to appear all holy and righteous.

[keithbvadu2]

13. Tommy Norment? Very interesting.

Tommy Norment? Very interesting.