NORFOLK, Va. — When Steve Peacock first saw the decades-old racist photograph that has Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia in hot water, it took him back to the days when he was getting chased home every day by angry white classmates.

He also remembered the time he was in a restaurant with several white friends, and they all had to leave when the restaurant would not serve him because he was black.

“The worst feeling of my life,” he said. The experiences, he said, made him hate white people.

But Peacock, 61, is among the Virginians bucking the political establishment that has swiftly demanded Northam’s resignation after an image on his medical school yearbook page surfaced Friday, showing two figures, one in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

As the pastor of a church, Peacock said he now embraced everyone, regardless of race, and that he was a living example that people can change.

“I have to look at his heart now and see what his real feelings are,” said Peacock, who grew up in Portsmouth. “I could vote for him again if he could persuade me that’s not really him now.”

After apologizing Friday for appearing in the photo, Northam now denies that he is in it.

For Virginians in this region, which is home to Northam, grappling with the fallout over the picture is as complicated as this state’s tragic racial history.

Virginia has become a Democratic stronghold with a diverse population and an increasingly liberal brand of politics. But the insidious racism that gripped it for generations is always scratching at the surface. The birthdays of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson are state holidays. Black residents say they sometimes feel discriminated against, and activists say the criminal justice system in the state is sorely in need of reforms.

Peacock may not align with the Democratic mainstream, but there are voters who hope that this moment, rather than fading from public memory as quickly as it appeared, will serve as a wake-up call. If a Democratic governor who aggressively courted African-American communities could be tied to something so blatantly racist, then this liberal-minded state could hardly rest easy, they said.

“The same folks who are calling out and opposing the symbols of racism, I just hope that this is a moment where people are willing to have real conversations and work to break down some of these other systemic barriers that are oppressing communities of color,” said Tram Nguyen, executive director of New Virginia Majority, a liberal political organization.

Northam was sworn into office in 2018 by a black pastor, the Rev. Kelvin Jones, and the governor is a member of Jones’ predominantly black church, First Baptist Church Capeville. The white clapboard church, with a tall, skinny steeple, is about a 45-minute drive from Onancock, Virginia, the quaint Eastern Shore fishing village where Northam grew up.

Northam returned to the church Sunday, where a congregation of dozens of mostly black worshippers held hands with him and his wife as they sang and prayed, reflecting on Jones’ message that “he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

“We may not be able to do anything with the Black Caucus or the NAACP or all those that are calling for the resignation, but, God, we put it in your hands,” Jones prayed.

Joe Dillard, president of the Norfolk branch of the NAACP, said he had been pleased that Northam had pledged to do things like expand Medicaid, raise the minimum wage and raise the threshold for larceny to be considered a felony. But he found that Northam was not as aggressive on other issues of concern to black communities, such as black business development.

Dillard said the embattled governor should resign because he was not initially forthcoming with the public about his history with blackface. In a news conference Saturday, Northam said he had told a black campaign aide during his electoral run two years ago that he had darkened his face to perform as Michael Jackson in a dance contest. That would have been the time for the governor to proactively discuss his racial missteps, Dillard said.

“Don’t ask for forgiveness when it’s discovered,” said Dillard, 30. “Ask for forgiveness when you know that it’s wrong.”

Dillard said it was time for the left to do some soul searching. “Take political parties out of it; that imagery and that behavior still exists today,” he said. “I do believe that there are probably still Democrats who have the same types of situations, same types of backgrounds as we discovered with Ralph Northam.”

As disappointed as many Virginians might have been in Northam, several said they were not surprised.

The first enslaved Africans brought to this country came through Virginia’s shores 400 years ago. The commonwealth passed Jim Crow era laws to prevent interracial marriage. Rather than following the Supreme Court’s order to send white and black children to the same schools, the state closed its schools for several years in the 1950s so it would not have to comply. And just two years ago, white supremacists marched in Charlottesville to violently protest the removal of a Confederate statue.

Northam won 80 percent of the vote in predominantly black communities, according to Nguyen. While his call for the removal of Confederate monuments in the wake of Charlottesville might have deepened his minority support, the racist photo on his yearbook page showed that he was not immune to the state’s deeply rooted racism, several Virginians said.

“Down here, they’ll play with you a little while and then they’ll pull the trigger on you and let you know you are and will always be lower,” said Wendy Boyd-Sealy, who is black and has lived in Norfolk, where 42 percent of residents are African-American, since 2003.

Still, Boyd-Sealy, 59, said she believed that Northam should be given a second chance because people were too sensitive, that Northam should not be judged by that picture alone and that he was probably just a product of his environment.

Beverly McDonald, who owns the Norfolk branch of the soul food restaurant Croaker’s Spot, said she was torn. If Northam was currently advocating for black communities, the past might not be such a big deal, said McDonald, who is black.

Linda Williams, 74, and her husband, James, 76, were already sour on Northam because of his support for abortion rights. The photograph, they said, only solidified for them that he was not fit to lead the state. It was a vestige of a time they said they would sooner have left in the past.

The Williamses, who are white, were just teenagers when the state resisted school desegregation. They recalled having to go to school at a church for half a year before their public schools reopened. The seven black students sent to their school, Linda Williams said, were constantly harassed. One of the boys had his locker glued shut, she said. Someone flushed a necklace that one of the black girls had down the toilet.

“People here in the Deep South, they held onto some really bad traditions,” Linda Williams said.

Blackface, she said she believed, was not among those bad traditions. Linda Williams said she used to enjoy watching videos of the singer Al Jolson performing in blackface.

“It was just entertainment,” she said. “It just didn’t seem degrading in anyway. It wasn’t presenting black people in a bad way.”

But what was posted to Northam’s yearbook page was different, Linda Williams and her husband said. Portraying a black man standing next to a KKK member could do nothing but incite, James Williams said.

“It’s making fun of people,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.