Virginia Marks 400th Anniv. of Slaves Arrival

Officials in Virginia marked the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans slaves to the American state.

Mean while, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Saturday a new state commission to review educational standards for teaching black history in the state, adding before the 2019 African Landing Commemorative Ceremony in Hampton: "we are a state that for too long has told a false story of ourselves".

Northam explained that he sent an order to create the commission to review instructional practices, content, and resources currently used to teach African American history in the state.

"We often fail to draw the connecting lines from those past events to our present day, but to move forward, that is what we must do," Northam, a Democrat, said. "We know that racism and discrimination aren't locked in the past. They weren't solved with the Civil Rights Act. They didn't disappear. They merely evolved."

According to AP, the event was part of a weekend of ceremonies that are unfolding in the backdrop of rising white nationalism across the country and a lingering scandal surrounding Northam and a blackface photo.

Earlier in February, Northam faced pressures to resign after a racist picture was leaked from his 1984 medical school yearbook page. Back then, he denied being in the picture but admitted to wearing blackface as a young man while portraying Michael Jackson at a dance party in the 1980s.

On another hand, Northam noted that he has met with people around the state over the past several months to listen to views about inequities that still exist, prompting him to confront "some painful truths."

"Among those truths was my own incomplete understanding regarding race and equity," Northam said. "I have learned a great deal from those discussions, and I have more to learn, but I also learned that the more I know, the more I can do."

The event was held on Chesapeake Bay, where ships traded men and women from what's now Angola for supplies from English colonists. The landing in August 1619 is considered a pivotal moment that presaged a system of race-based slavery.