- Oct 17, 2011
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Faced with outrage from black alumni and the resignation of at least three African American staffers, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. has deleted and apologized for a two-week-old tweet that showed a face mask decorated with a photo of a person in Ku Klux Klan robes and another in blackface.
The images were intended to mock the mask requirement implemented by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who nearly resigned from his office last year amid revelations that the racist photo had been featured on his medical school yearbook page.
LeeQuan McLaurin, who began as a student at Liberty in 2012 and has worked there since, resigned from his position as director of diversity retention last week. He said in an email that Falwell’s tweet on May 27 was a tipping point of larger racially related problems that he has experienced at the school, which he said have contributed to a drop in Liberty’s residential undergraduate African American population from 10 percent to 4 percent between 2007 and 2018.
Following his apology, Falwell said in an interview that he was unaware of McLaurin’s resignation, as well as the resignation of another black staff member, Keyvon Scott, who was an online admissions counselor.
“I cannot in good faith encourage people to attend a school with racially insensitive leadership and culture,” Scott wrote on Twitter.
In the interview, Falwell was dismissive of a letter signed by 35 black alumni who asked him to remove his tweet, saying it was a small percentage among 360,000 graduates of the school.
“The tweet was aimed at the governor,” he said. “It accidentally offended them.”
The images were intended to mock the mask requirement implemented by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who nearly resigned from his office last year amid revelations that the racist photo had been featured on his medical school yearbook page.
LeeQuan McLaurin, who began as a student at Liberty in 2012 and has worked there since, resigned from his position as director of diversity retention last week. He said in an email that Falwell’s tweet on May 27 was a tipping point of larger racially related problems that he has experienced at the school, which he said have contributed to a drop in Liberty’s residential undergraduate African American population from 10 percent to 4 percent between 2007 and 2018.
Following his apology, Falwell said in an interview that he was unaware of McLaurin’s resignation, as well as the resignation of another black staff member, Keyvon Scott, who was an online admissions counselor.
“I cannot in good faith encourage people to attend a school with racially insensitive leadership and culture,” Scott wrote on Twitter.
In the interview, Falwell was dismissive of a letter signed by 35 black alumni who asked him to remove his tweet, saying it was a small percentage among 360,000 graduates of the school.
“The tweet was aimed at the governor,” he said. “It accidentally offended them.”
