The tour guide handed raw, prickly cotton to some young black students who were part of a group visiting the oldest operating governor’s mansion in the country, one that was built with slave labor. She asked them to imagine what it would be like to be a slave picking the crop.

What made the request only more shocking, a mother of one of the children said, was who was asking it: Pam Northam, the wife of Ralph S. Northam, the embattled governor of Virginia, who is trying to repair his relationship with African-Americans after a scandal over a racist yearbook photo and an admission of wearing blackface.

The students, aged 13 and 14, were on the tour last Thursday as part of a get-together for State Senate pages as the legislative session closes. The governor’s office said that Ms. Northam did not single out the black students, but handed the cotton to those nearest to her so that they could pass it around and everyone could feel the sharpness of the stems and leaves, and consider handling the rough materials all day, every day. It is part of her standard procedure, and she had done the same with white visitors.

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