Ralph Northam’s Great-Grandfather was ‘Red Shirt’, Family Owned 42 Slaves. Well corn our pone.
Northam’s roots can be traced back to his great grandfather, Captain J.E. Brownlee, also a Democrat, who fought against the Yankees in the Civil War. After the war, he was a stalwart member of the “Red Shirts,” a group of white supremacists – all Democrats – who made a name for themselves by intimidating freed slaves to stop them from voting.