BURKE, Va. — Virginia’s governor pulled out of an event where he would have faced protesters for wearing blackface in the 1980s.

The Washington Post reported that Gov. Ralph Northam cited safety concerns for canceling his appearance at a Sunday fundraiser for a Democratic state senator in northern Virginia.

The protesters were assembled in Burke by the Fairfax County NAACP and the state Republican Party. Northam had faced calls to step down in February after a racist photo surfaced from his 1984 medical school yearbook. It included a photo of a person in blackface standing next to someone wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit.

Northam denies being in that photo. But he has admitted to wearing blackface while portraying Michael Jackson at a dance party in the 1980s.

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