Young, Plummer Bernard Sr.
1884-1962 · Contribution: 1910-1962
Purchased a small fraternal newsletter for $3,050 in 1910 and built it over 52 years into the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the largest-circulation Black newspaper in the American South and, by many accounts, the best-edited Black newspaper in the country
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
Young took over the 600-subscriber Lodge Journal and Guide as plant foreman in 1907, purchased it outright in 1910, and renamed it the Norfolk Journal and Guide, growing its circulation to 35,000 by 1935 and making it, at its peak, the single largest employer of African Americans in the entire South. Editorially cautious in the tradition of Booker T. Washington, Young nonetheless used the paper to campaign for equal teacher pay, extensive coverage of the Scottsboro Boys trials, and Black voter mobilization, and in 1942 organized and chaired the Southern Conference on Race Relations in Durham, North Carolina, whose resulting “Durham Manifesto” condemning Jim Crow helped spawn the Southern Regional Council. He served as chairman of Howard University’s board of trustees and, in 1943, was appointed to the federal Fair Employment Practices Commission, before retiring in 1946 and passing management of the family-run paper to his sons.
Life & background
Born July 27, 1884, in Littleton, North Carolina, the son of a formerly enslaved newspaper publisher, Young attended St. Augustine’s College without completing a degree and moved to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1907 to work for the Lodge Journal and Guide, a small fraternal newsletter he purchased and renamed three years later. He led the Norfolk Journal and Guide as editor and publisher until his 1946 retirement, remained a prominent civic and educational leader in Virginia for the rest of his life, and died at Norfolk General Hospital on October 9, 1962, at age 78.
Sources
- NC DNCR; African American Registry; PBS (Soldiers Without Swords)
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