Jerry Falwell Jr., the leader of a prominent evangelical Christian university whose controversial tweet last month included a racist photo on Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page, has resulted in the exit of at least four Black staff members and four Black athletes from Liberty University, reports The Hill.
Falwell, a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump’s, on May 27 shared an image from Northam’s medical school yearbook that originally surfaced last year, depicting a person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe.
"If I am ordered to wear a mask, I will reluctantly comply, but only if this picture of Governor Blackface himself is on it!” Falwell tweeted at the time.
LeeQuan McLaurin, the university's Director of Diversity Retention, resigned earlier this month. "I can not just be a window dressing on what is clearly an institution that struggles with a history of racism, prejudice, and discrimination,” he wrote at the time.
Keyvon Scott, who resigned as an online admissions counselor after Falwell's tweet, said that “if he’s serious, he needs to make a change, not just put it" on social media.
Falwell took the tweet down in early June and apologized for tweeting the photo.
“After listening to African American LU leaders and alumni over the past week and hearing their concerns, I understand that by tweeting an image to remind all of the governor’s racist past I actually refreshed the trauma that image had caused and offended some by using the image to make a political point," he tweeted Monday.
Falwell, a stalwart backer of President Donald Trump and the son of the late evangelist the Rev. Jerry Falwell, said he had deleted the tweet and apologized “for any hurt my effort caused, especially within the African American community.”
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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