Louis Isaac Jaffé, editor of the influential Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper from 1919 until his death in 1950, earned renown for his sponsorship and promotion of Virginia’s anti-lynching law and his racial activism. A lifelong liberal, Jaffé battled bigotry and championed reforms that improved the daily lives of southern blacks, especially those residing in Hampton Roads. In 1929, he became Virginia’s first Pulitzer Prize winner when he received the award for an editorial decrying the 1928 lynching of a black man in Houston, Texas.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, of orthodox Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Jaffé’s Jewish roots and the anti-Semitism he endured undoubtedly augmented his sensitivity to the injustices blacks faced. After graduation from what is now Duke University in 1911, a stint at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and military service in World War I, Jaffé became editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot in 1919. He earned a reputation as one of the South’s foremost liberal journalists with editorials defending civil liberties during the postwar communist scare; attacking the Ku Klux Klan, religious fundamentalists seeking to prevent the teaching of evolution, and Virginia’s racial integrity law; and urging state action to prevent lynching. His role in the founding of Norfolk State University stands as another of his lasting contributions to the welfare of blacks.
Alex Leidholt, associate professor of media arts and design, James Madison University, author of Editor for Justice: The Life of Louis I. Jaffé, Louisiana State University Press, 2002.
Brought to you by Encyclopedia Virginia at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
Further Reading
Image Credit: photo by Ralph T.K. Larson, 1949, courtesy Louis I. Jaffé Jr.
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