Born: July 27, 1884, Littleton, NC

Education: St. Augustine's College, 1903–05

Died: October 9, 1962, Norfolk, VA

Young published and edited the Norfolk, Virginia Journal and Guide, a leading black newspaper in the segregated South. The “dean of Negro editors,” respected “race man” and moderate, he advocated black self-help and interracial cooperation to fight segregation.

Young learned early on “to build from within.” He apprenticed in printing under his parents, publishers of the Littleton, North Carolina True Reformer. As a student and instructor at St. Augustine's College, he honed his journalistic skills. Moving to Norfolk, he worked for The Lodge Journal and Guide, which he eventually bought and renamed in 1910. Its circulation rose from 500 to more than 30,000 by 1917, making it the largest black weekly in the South.

Young opposed Jim Crow. Yet, as did many African American moderates, he fought carefully, pursuing federal action as well as southern white liberals’ support to abolish it. Black journalists chose him in 1918 to lead their conference on military and civilian injustices, including lynching, job discrimination, and unequal education. He chaired the 1942 Durham, North Carolina conference of southern black leaders. The conferees issued the historic Durham Manifesto, which condemned “the principle and practice of compulsory segregation in our American society” and inspired postwar civil rights struggles.