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The hotly anticipated findings of a probe into how a racially charged photo appeared on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s yearbook page 35 years ago is expected to be released Wednesday.
The Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk announced it would release a written report at that time and hold a news conference. The law firm McGuireWoods completed a monthslong independent inquiry into the photo on the 1984 yearbook page, which shows one person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb.
Northam's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News on Tuesday.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, left, gestures as his wife, Pam, listens during a Feb. 2 news conference in the Governors Mansion at the Capitol in Richmond. A law firm has completed its investigation into how a racially charged photo appeared on a yearbook page for Northam back in 1984. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
The photo was published by a conservative blog, Big League Politics, and resulted in a backlash against the Democratic governor and calls for his resignation. The matter soon engulfed other politicians, including Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who admitted to wearing blackface in college, and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who was accused of sexual assault by two women.
NORTHAM SAYS HE IS NOT IN RACIST YEARBOOK PHOTO, BUT ACKNOWLEDGES DARKENING FACE FOR ANOTHER PARTY
Northam initially issued two apologies within hours of the publication of the photo. He reversed course the next day and said he wasn’t convinced he was one of the men pictured. He did, however, reveal he wore blackface once, decades ago, to look like Michael Jackson for a dance contest.
Upon resisting calls from political opponents and many in his own party to step down, Northam said he wanted to focus his remaining three years in office on racial inequities.
Since the scandal broke, he's received praise from black lawmakers for halting suspensions of driver’s licenses for motorists with unpaid court fines, and for reviewing how the nation’s fraught racial history is taught in Virginia public schools.
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The photo on Northam’s 1984 yearbook page was one of three that year that contained blackface depictions. School leaders called it “shockingly abhorrent” and commissioned an investigation into past yearbooks and the school’s culture at the time.
Dr. Giac Chan Nguyen-Tan, a physician practicing in Connecticut, said earlier this year that a page he laid out for the yearbook was changed before publication without his knowledge.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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