West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice appointed Jill Upson, chairwoman of a PAC called Black Americans for the President’s Agenda, to head West Virginia’s Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs just months after her organization ran a racist ad about Democrats lynching black men.
According to a Tuesday Register-Herald report, Upson will be in charge of, among other things, identifying and proposing rewrites for policies that harm minorities.
Upson previously served as a state delegate, but was defeated in the most recent election. The West Virginia branch of the NAACP reportedly called on her to resign that post due to the ad.
The ad, which ran in late October for Rep. French Hill (R-AK), featured two seemingly black women discussing the likelihood that white Democrats would start lynching black men as part of the #MeToo movement.
Both Hill and Upson denounced the ad — Upson tried to wash her hands of any responsibility. “Upon listening to the ad last night, I contacted the organization’s founder and demanded that it be removed from the air and no longer played,” she wrote in a Facebook post. However, her words seemed to have had no effect on the playing of the ads.
Per the Register-Herald, the former person who held the minority office chairmanship, Bill White, was booted after he admitted to sexually assaulting his employee.
