In the 405-year history of the state, Virginia Delegate Don Scott Jr. is the first Black speaker of the House of Delegates. Scott, a representative from a district that encompasses Portsmouth, was the minority leader prior to Democrats seizing control of the House in the previous election.
Prior to starting his legal career, Scott served time in federal prison after being arrested for narcotics offenses. Following his graduation from LSU Law School, he was a member of the Navy before being found guilty of federal narcotics charges and sentenced to seven years in jail. NBC News reports that he feels the punishment was excessive given the nature of his offense.
“I made the dreadful mistake of going to pick up some money, some drug money,” he said. According to him, before his prison sentence, he had never been in any trouble. “I remember my mother in the courtroom. I can hear the little yelp that she made when a judge said 10 years. I still hear that sometimes,” Scott added.
After leaving prison, he relocated to Virginia and entered the business sector. Before sitting for the bar test to become an attorney, he would advance through corporate America. His time spent behind bars motivated him to work for prison system reform as a criminal defense lawyer.
“Jail sucks the blood from you,” he said in an interview with The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2018. “That’s why I fight.”
It is said that he concealed his criminal history until he was a candidate for public office. The Portsmouth Democrat was unanimously selected by his party to serve as speaker in November after being first elected to the chamber in 2019.
It was “an honor and privilege to be elected as the first Black speaker of the House of Delegates, 405 years” after its founding and, “coincidentally, 405 years after the first enslaved people who arrived here not far from here,” Scott said in a brief speech following his sworn in as speaker on Wednesday.
“I look around this room, I see the ghosts of the people who worked here, the Black people whose dignity was not recognized in this room,” he said, looking around the Statehouse, a building built by slaves. “We carry their hopes and dreams and posterity. I carry it in my heart. All the people who never got their rights heard. Thank God the commonwealth has turned the page.”
Scott grew up in Texas and he is one of six children raised by a single mother who struggled to make ends meet.
“Scott remembers meals of mayonnaise sandwiches and long hours at the local library, which his mother leaned on for free childcare. The young Scott turned into a voracious reader, which he says contributed to him going to college,” according to NPR.