Edwin Gustav Pipp (1864-1935)
Edwin Gustav Pipp, born Nov. 17 1864 in Brighton, Mich. son of Heinrich (Henry) W. and Bertha (Buck) Pipp. Educated at Brighton High School and married at Pierson, Michigan Oct 15th 1884 to Grace Gaylord and again Detroit, Mich. Sept 26th 1907 to Bess Bratton. Began active career at 16 in wholesale hardware business, operating in Bay City, Detroit and Buffalo Mich until age 27. Editor of country weekly in Kansas 1891-1902, moved to Detroit in 1902 started as reporter to Detroit News and became city editor, Sept 1904. Has been managing editor of the Evening News Association, publishers of the Detroit News and the Sunday News-Tribune since 1905.
Left to right: Edwin Gaylord Pipp II, Eleanore (Waters) Pipp, their son James Pipp, Madeline Waters?, Betty (wife of Frank H. Pipp)?, Bessie (Bratton) Pipp, Edwin Gaylord Pipp III, Edwin Gustav Pipp (editor)
Pipp was brought on by Henry Ford to run the Dearborn Independent, which Ford bought in 1918. That relationship is summerized by the National Endowment for the Humanities here:
Ford’s appointment of Edwin Gustav Pipp, previously managing editor of the Detroit News, appeared to indicate a serious journalistic purpose. This, however, was not the path the paper would follow. Pipp resigned as editor by April 1920, having learned of the Dearborn Publishing Company’s intent to launch an antisemitic campaign. Pipp later published his The Real Henry Ford (1922). Pipp was replaced as editor of the Independent by William J. Cameron, who published articles such as the May 22, 1920 piece: “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” which occupied the entire front page of that issue. Like many subsequent articles and stand-alone publications, the substance of the Independent article was based on the discredited Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia in 1903. In January 1921, a statement titled “The Peril of Racial Prejudice,” denouncing the Independent as “un-American” for its antisemitic position, was published and signed by 100 notables including President Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan, and Clarence Darrow among others. In 1921, city ordinances were passed in Chicago and Toledo temporarily forbidding the sale of the Independent.
Pipp owned and ran Pipp’s Weekly from 1920 to 1924. He also published several books: