The racial strife roiling the country and its politics has reached an unlikely redoubt of social conservatism, Jerry Falwell Jr’s Liberty University.

Blackface and Ku Klux Klan imagery tweeted by Falwell, who tolerates little dissent at the evangelical university he leads, has spurred staff resignations, demands for his firing by influential alumni, an incipient boycott and a raucous protest in the university’s home of Lynchburg, Virginia., over the past week.

So heated was the response that on Monday, Falwell, the university’s president and a vocal ally of President Trump, did something rare for him in the heat of a controversy: He apologised for a May 27 tweet in which he mocked the social-distancing orders of Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam. In that tweet was the image of a mask on which was emblazoned the photo from Northam’s medical school yearbook of a man in black face and another in Ku Klux Klan robes, one of whom might be Northam.

“After listening to African-American LU leaders and alumni over the past week and hearing their concerns, I understand that by tweeting an image to remind all of the governor’s racist past, I actually refreshed the trauma that image had caused and offended some by using the image to make a political point,” Falwell said in a statement and on Twitter. “Based on our long relationships, they uniformly understood this was not my intent, but because it was the result, I have deleted the tweet and apologise for any hurt my effort caused, especially within the African-American community.”

It is not clear whether the overture — as much another jab at Northam as an olive branch to Falwell’s critics — will defuse the controversy.

“Your actions have shown you really don’t care about the black community, and that’s sad,” Keyvon Scott, an online admissions counsellor who had resigned in protest, said upon learning of Falwell’s apology. “You can’t say this is a Christian university, but then everything that comes out your mouth is about Trump.”

The tweet in question came after months of criticism over Falwell’s decision to reopen Liberty University after spring break, despite the coronavirus pandemic, and of his mockery of social distancing orders.

“I was adamantly opposed to the mandate from @GovernorVA requiring citizens to wear face masks until I decided to design my own,” Falwell wrote above the blackface and Klan image. “If I am ordered to wear a mask, I will reluctantly comply, but only if this picture of Governor Blackface himself is on it!”

At least four black faculty and staff members resigned in protest.

New York Times News Service