Editor Dickerson Denied a New Trial

The Corporation Court convicts the editor of the Norfolk News and Advertiser of criminal libel for “slandering Josephine Davis, the leader of the choir in St. John’s Methodist Church.”

J. E. Dickerson, Jr., the negro editor of the newspaper, Norfolk News and Advertiser, issued here and in Petersburg was denied a new trial to-day. He appeared in the Corporation Court to move for a new trial against a verdict of five months in jail and $100 fine for criminal libel. He was convicted of slandering Josephine Davis, the leader of the choir in St. John’s Methodist Church, colored. He has written vicious articles of the woman, her husband, who is superintendent of the Sunday School; the pastor of the church, and all of the witnesses who testified in the courts in favor of the woman. The supposition is that he has lost mental balance, though the articles of his paper are written correctly, and in excellent style. He has not offered any explanation or retraction, and he seems willing to go to jail and stay there in the effort “to elevate the race."

“Editor Dickerson Denied a New Trial,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 19, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1293.