Another White politician has admitted to wearing blackface. Alabama’s Gov. Kay Ivey finally apologized six months after a photo of her wearing blackface in college emerged.
In the mid-1960s, Ivey attended Auburn University and participated in a skit called “Cigar Butts” where she wore blackface while crawling on the floor looking for cigar butts. A 1967 recording of her then-fiancé, Ben LaRavia, describing the incident has also emerged.
On Aug. 29, Ivey released a statement where she apologized for wearing blackface. “As such, I fully acknowledge — with genuine remorse — my participation in a skit like that back when I was a senior in college,” she said. “While some may attempt to excuse this as acceptable behavior for a college student during the mid-1960s, that is not who I am today, and it is not what my administration represents all these years later.”
Ivey is the third prominent politician to be caught in a blackface scandal. In February 2019, photos of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam emerged of him wearing blackface and a KKK-like white sheet in a 1984 photo from his time at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Northam initially apologized and later claimed that the person in the photo was not him. Although he caught severe backlash from the Black community and political leaders in Virginia, Northam refused to step down from his position as governor.
Furthermore, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring also admitted to wearing blackface while in college during the 1980s. He continued in his position after the incident made national headlines.
Ivey, who was re-elected in 2018, also made national headlines for signing a strict abortion bill in Alabama. The bill would basically outlaw all abortions, even when women and girls were impregnated as a result of rape or incest.
