(CNN) First lady of Virginia Pam Northam handed cotton to African-American children on a tour of the governor's mansion and asked them to imagine being slaves in the fields, the mother of one of the children alleged.

Leah Dozier Walker, a state employee who is the director of the Office of Equity and Community Engagement at the Virginia Department of Education, wrote to Pam Northam's office on Monday alleging that on a tour for state Senate pages, the first lady spoke in the mansion's kitchen cottage -- where slaves used to work -- and gave black pages, including Walker's eighth grade daughter, pieces of cotton. Walker's daughter has said she did not take the cotton.

"During the tour of the Mansion Cottage, (Walker's daughter) and two of her (fellow) pages were asked to hold cotton that the First Lady retrieved from a bowl on a nearby table," Walker wrote in the letter. "Mrs. Northam then asked these three pages (the only African-American pages in the program) if they could imagine what it must have been like to pick cotton all day."

The interaction comes as Pam Northam's embattled husband, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, attempts to reconcile with African-American constituents amid scandal over a photo on his medical school yearbook page of a man in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Northam originally admitted to being in the photo, but then said he was not -- but that he did wear blackface once to impersonate Michael Jackson at a dance contest.

Walker added that the incident with Pam Northam indicated to her that the Northams didn't grasp the implications of their behavior, which she said was tone deaf.

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