Panel calls for state to purge old racist laws

RICHMOND, VA. » The laws are still on the books in Virginia: Blacks and whites must sit in separate rail cars. They cannot use the same playgrounds, schools or mental hospitals. They can’t marry each other either.

The measures have not been enforced for decades, but they remain in the state’s official legal record. A state commission on Thursday recommended that dozens of such discriminatory statutes finally be repealed, in some cases more than a century after they were adopted.

Although “some of these acts were rendered null and void by an amended Virginia Constitution, by landmark civil rights cases or legislation, it’s clear that they are vestiges of Virginia’s segregationist past that still sit on the books. ... We should not afford them the distinction of that official status,” said Chief Deputy Attorney General Cynthia Hudson, who led the panel of attorneys, judges, scholars and community leaders.

The commission said the laws should be repealed in the legislative session that begins in January. Gov. Ralph Northam pledged to work with fellow Democrats who will control the General Assembly to do so.

Northam announced the formation of the commission in June, several months after a scandal erupted over a racist photo of someone in blackface and someone in a Ku Klux Klan robe on his medical school yearbook page.

He initially acknowledged he was in the photo and apologized, then reversed course the next day, saying he was not in it.