Encyclopedia Virginia "Anti-Lynching Law of 1928" Webpage Screenshot, 2016 January 22
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Fullscreen@ |NCYCLOPEDIA VIRGIN IA _ Search A Publication of vfh Virginia Foundation for the Humanities In partnership with LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA SOL | RSS | About Us | Sponsors | Contact Us A-Z Index Browse the Map y Virginia ~ Educators Anti-Lynching Law of 1928 Contributed by Douglas Smith The Virginia Anti-Lynching Law of 1928, signed by Virginia governor Harry Flood Byrd Sr. on March 14, 1928, was the first measure in the nation that defined lynching specifically as a state crime. The bill's enactment marked the culmination of a campaign waged by Louis Isaac Jaffé, the editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, who responded more forcefully than any other white Virginian to an increase in mob violence in the mid-1920s. Jaffé's efforts, however, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1929, came to fruition only after the state's political and business leadership recognized that mob violence was a threat to their efforts to attract business and industry, Ironically, no white person was ever convicted of lynching an African American under the law. MORE... Newspaper Editor Louis Isaac Jaffé http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Antilynching_Law_of_1928
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