Awards & Winners

Louis Isaac Jaffe

Louis Isaac Jaffe was editorial page editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot from 1919 to 1950. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1929 for An Unspeakable Act of Savagery, which condemned lynching. Jaffe spent his early life in Durham NC where his parents, Lithuanian immigrants, were shopkeepers. He attended Durham High School and Trinity College, the forerunner of Duke University. After U.S. Army service in World War I he headed the Red Cross News Service, headquartered in Paris, and toured the Balkans reporting on postwar devastation. He returned to the United States in 1920 to accept an offer to become editor of the Virginian-Pilot and held this post for thirty years until his death. He was a progressive force in state and local politics and won national recognition for his campaign against lynching. A biography titled Editor for Justice: The Life of Louis I. Jaffe by Alexander S. Leidholdt, was published in 2002

Awards by Louis Isaac Jaffe

Check all the awards nominated and won by Louis Isaac Jaffe.

1929


Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing
(For his editorial entitled 'An Unspeakable Act of Savagery,' which is typical of a series of articles written on the lynching evil and in successful advocacy of legislation to prevent it.)