Auburn Yearbook Photo Shows Ivey’s Sorority Sisters in Minstrel Show; Governor Is Not in the Picture

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By BirminghamWatch

The Auburn Plainsman reported Monday that a photo in the 1967 yearbook shows members of Gov. Kay Ivey’s sorority putting on a minstrel show that appears to have been taken during Rush that year.

The photo shows five young Alpha Gamma Delta members wearing black masks and shirts with caricatures of black people on the pockets. The caption on the photo reads “Alpha Gam Minstrels welcome rushees aboard their showboat.”

Ivey, who was a senior at Auburn University at the time, is not among the women in the photo. Her press secretary, Daniel Sparkman, told the Plainsman: “We talked to the governor this morning … She knows nothing about the page in the first place, and she does not appear on that page.”

Sparkman said Ivey was president of her freshman pledge class but quickly turned her attention to the student government association, of which she was vice president her senior year, and took on no more official roles in the sorority.

Attention has turned to old photos documenting racist actions since the release of a photo purporting to be Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam wearing blackface while a college student in the ‘80s, then the Virginia attorney general’s admission that he had worn blackface to a party in 1980.

 

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