Speaker Don Scott Makes Huge History 🏛 First Day Photos, Virginia Legislative Black Caucus Reception

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Speaker Don Scott Makes Huge History in Virginia

VIRGINIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY. FIRST DAY OF SESSION. From 1890 to 1976 not a single Black delegate served in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Speaker Scott is sworn in by Judge S. Bernard Goodwyn, Chief Justice of Virginia.

Fifty six years after the first Black delegate, William Ferguson Reid, served in the Virginia House a Black person now serves as Speaker. In a historic scene that would have been unthinkable only a short time ago, a Black Chief Justice of Virginia, S. Bernard Goodwyn, presided over the oath of Virginia’s first Black Speaker of the House, Don Scott of Portsmouth, Virginia. That was followed hours later by another image that included Virginia’s first Black woman to serve as Lt. Governor, Winsome Sears, who sat alongside State Senator L. Louise Lucas, who is the Virginia Senate’s first Black Finance Chair and the first Black President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

In a scene neither Carter Glass or Harry Byrd, Sr. could have ever imagined, the new Virginia legislature featured a record 31 Black lawmakers. Leadership includes three Black lawmakers. January 10, 2024 was a day that was 405 years in the making in a southern state that has featured massive resistance, open talk of preventing Blacks from voting and monuments to confederates.

The new Speaker launched his most emotional remarks for his mother and wife.