New Journal and Guide Will Mark 124th Anniversary By Honoring 7 Hampton Roads NAACP Branches

By Brenda H. Andrews
Publisher
New Journal and Guide
NORFOLK

For 124 years, the New Journal and Guide has been publishing weekly as a dedicated voice of the Black community. On Saturday, October 19, we will pause to celebrate our longevity and resilience with gratitude as one of the nation’s oldest Black-owned businesses by hosting our 10th Annual Impacting Lives Breakfast Ceremony at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott.

Over the past decade of Impacting Lives, we have awarded many well-known and unsung heroes whom we chose because of their positive impact on the lives of citizens in Hampton Roads.

This year’s honorees are the seven branches of the NAACP in the cities we serve – Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Virginia Beach., Suffolk, Hampton and Newport News. Like the Black Press we represent, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has spent 115 years on the battlefield advocating on behalf of Black Americans for justice, freedom, equity and manifestation of the American Dream for all people regardless of race, creed or color.

It is a great honor for the New Journal and Guide to shine a light on our local branches of the NAACP who yet continue as the first line of defense when civil rights abuses occur. It is often a thankless assignment they are missioned to undertake.

Breakfast guests will enjoy the music of international gospel violinist Eric Taylor and NAACP ACT-SO youth soloist Tramaine Spruill. Also, the oratorical performance of  Nathan Richardson as abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the poetry of NJG columnist Sean Bowers.

Ms. Lisa Godley of WHRO will serve as the Mistress of Ceremony.

Many persons have made outstanding contributions to the continuing publication of the Journal and Guide tradition as we observe 124 years, notably, P.B. Young, Sr. (the founding publisher, who, over a 50-year tenure,  fostered the growth of a newsletter into one of the nation’s premier Black weeklies and for whom a Norfolk public housing community is named); his sons, P.B. Young, Jr., Thomas Young and Bernard Young ; photographer Southall Bass; photojournalists John Q. Jordan and John Hinton; Chief Reporter Emeritus Leonard E. Colvin; and Owner/Publisher Dr. Milton A. Reid, whom I succeeded in 1991 as Owner, Publisher and CEO.

The New Journal and Guide publishes each Thursday and has a readership that extends throughout the United States and abroad. We report news and information at the local, state, national and international levels that affect the African-American community. Our main distribution area is Hampton Roads.