Chicago-based African-American newspaper
The Chicago Defender
is a
Chicago
-based online
African-American newspaper
. It was founded in 1905 by
Robert S. Abbott
and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind.
[1]
Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against
Jim Crow
-era
violence
and urged black people in the
American South
to settle in the north in what became the
Great Migration
. Abbott worked out an informal distribution system with
Pullman porters
who surreptitiously (and sometimes against southern state laws and mores) took his paper by rail far beyond Chicago, especially to African American readers in the
southern United States
. Under his nephew and chosen successor,
John H. Sengstacke
, the paper dealt with
racial segregation in the United States
, especially
in the U.S. military
, during World War II.
[1]
Copies of the paper were passed along in communities, and it is estimated that at its most successful, each copy was read by four to five people.
[2]
In 1919?1922,
[3]
the
Defender
attracted the writing talents of
Langston Hughes
; from the 1940s through 1960s, Hughes wrote an opinion column for the paper. Washington, D.C., and international correspondent
Ethel Payne
, poet
Gwendolyn Brooks
, author
Willard Motley
, music critic
Dave Peyton
, journalists
Ida B. Wells
,
L. Alex Wilson
and
Louis Lomax
wrote for the paper at different times. During the height of the
civil rights movement
era, it was published as
The Chicago Daily Defender
, a daily newspaper, beginning in 1956. It became a weekly paper again in 2008.
[4]
In 2019, its publisher, Real Times Media Inc., announced that the
Defender
would cease its print edition but continue as an online publication.
[5]
[6]
The editorial board of the
Chicago Tribune
, observing the impact
The Defender
has had in its 114 years, praised the continuation of the publication in its new form.
[7]
Foundation and social impact, role in the Great Migration
[
edit
]
The Chicago Defender's
editor and founder
Robert Sengstacke Abbott
played a major role in influencing the
Great Migration of African Americans
from the rural South to the urban North by means of strong, moralistic rhetoric in his editorials and political cartoons, the promotion of Chicago as a destination, and the advertisement of successful black individuals as inspiration for blacks in the South.
The rhetoric and art exhibited in the
Defender
demanded equality of the races and promoted a northern migration. Abbott published articles that were exposes of southern crimes against blacks.
[8]
The
Defender
consistently published articles describing
lynchings in the South
, with vivid descriptions of gore and the victims' deaths. Lynchings were at a peak at the turn of the century, in the period when southern state legislatures passed new constitutions and laws to
disenfranchise most blacks
and exclude them from the political system. Legislatures dominated by conservative white Democrats established racial segregation and
Jim Crow
.
Abbott openly blamed the lynching violence on the white mobs who were typically involved, forcing readers to accept that these crimes were "systematic and unremitting".
[9]
The newspaper's intense focus on these injustices implicitly laid the groundwork upon which Abbott would build his explicit critiques of society. At the same time, the
NAACP
was publicizing the toll of lynching at its offices in New York City.
The art in the
Defender
, particularly its political cartoons by
Jay Jackson
and others, explicitly addressed race issues and advocated northern migration of blacks.
After the movement of southern blacks northward became a quantifiable phenomenon, the
Defender
took a particular interest in sensationalizing migratory stories, often on the front page.
[9]
Abbott positioned his paper as a primary influence of these movements before historians would, for he used the
Defender
to initiate and advertise a "Great Northern Drive" day, set for May 15, 1917.
[9]
The movement to northern and midwestern cities, and to the West Coast at the time of World War I, became known as the
Great Migration
, in which 1.5 million blacks moved out of the rural South in early 20th century years up to 1940, and another 5 million left towns and rural areas from 1940 to 1970.
Abbott used the
Defender
to promote Chicago as an attractive destination for southern blacks. Abbott presented Chicago as a promised-land with abundant jobs, as he included advertisements "clearly aimed at southerners," that called for massive numbers of workers wanted in factory positions.
[9]
The
Defender
was filled with advertisements for desirable commodities, beauty products and technological devices. Abbott's paper was the first black newspaper to incorporate a full entertainment section.
[9]
Chicago was portrayed as a lively city where blacks commonly went to the theaters, ate out at fancy restaurants, attended sports events, including "cheering for the
American Black Giants
, black America's favorite baseball team", and could dance all night in the hottest night clubs.
[8]
The
Defender
featured letters and poetry submitted by successful recent migrants; these writings "served as representative anecdotes, supplying readers with prototype examples
... that characterized the migration campaign".
[8]
To supplement these first-person accounts, Abbott often published small features on successful blacks in Chicago. The African American
mentalist
Princess Mysteria
had from 1920 to her death in 1930 a weekly column on the
Defender
, called "Advice to the Wise and Otherwise."
[10]
In 1923, Abbott and editor Lucius Harper created the
Bud Billiken Club
for black children through the "Junior Defender" page of the paper. The club encouraged the children's proper development, and reading
The Defender
. In 1929, the organization began the
Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic
, which is still held annually in Chicago in early August. In the 1950s, under Sengstacke's direction, the Bud Billiken Parade expanded and emerged as the largest single event in Chicago. Today, it attracts more than one million attendees with more than 25 million television viewers, making it one of the largest parades in the country.
[11]
In 1928, for the first time,
The Defender
refused to endorse a
Republican Party
presidential candidate. Throughout the election it ran a series of articles critical of the party, its failures to advance black civil rights, and what it saw as Republican's embrace or acquiescence in
segregationism
, party support in a revitalized
Ku Klux Klan
, and the Republican's
Lily White Movement
. The paper's final pre-election editorial read in part: “We want justice in America and we mean to get it. If 50 years of support to the Republican Party doesn’t get us justice, then we must of necessity shift our allegiance to new quarters.” For a variety of reasons, in the coming years, black support for the Republican Party fell rapidly.
[12]
Sengstacke era
[
edit
]
Abbott took a special interest in his nephew,
John H. Sengstacke
(1912?1997), paying for his education and grooming him to take over the
Defender,
which he did in 1940 after working with his uncle for several years. He urged integration of the armed forces. In 1948, he was appointed by President
Harry S. Truman
to the commission to study this proposal and plan the process, which was initiated by the military in 1949.
Sengstacke also brought together for the first time major black newspaper publishers and created the National Negro Publishers Association, later renamed the
National Newspaper Publishers Association
(NNPA). Two days following the associations first meeting in Chicago, Abbott died. In the early 21st century, the NNPA consists of more than 200 member black newspapers.
One of Sengstacke's most striking accomplishments occurred on February 6, 1956, when the
Defender
became a
daily newspaper
and changed its name to the
Chicago Daily Defender
, the nation's second black daily newspaper. It immediately became the largest black-owned daily in the nation.
[2]
It published as a daily until 2003, when new owners returned the
Defender
to a weekly publication schedule.
[4]
The
Defender
was one of only three African American dailies in the United States; the other two are the
Atlanta Daily World
,
[13]
the first black newspaper founded as a daily in 1928, and the New York
Daily Challenge
,
[14]
founded in 1971. In 1965, Sengstacke created a chain of newspapers, which also included the
Pittsburgh Courier
, the Memphis
Tri-State Defender
, and the
Michigan Chronicle
.
[2]
In a 1967 editorial, the
Defender
decried
anti-Semitism
in the community, reminding readers of the role of Jews in the civil rights movement. "These powerful voices," the
Defender
wrote, "which have been lifted on behalf of the Negro peoples' cause, should not be forgotten when resolutions are passed by the black power hierarchy. Jews and Negroes have problems in common. They can ill-afford to be at one another's throats."
[15]
Real Times Inc.
[
edit
]
Control of the
Chicago Defender
and her sister publications was transferred to a new ownership group named
Real Times Inc.
in January 2003. Real Times, Inc. was organized and led by
Thom Picou
, and
Robert (Bobby) Sengstacke
, John H. Sengstacke's surviving child and father of the beneficiaries of the Sengstacke Trust. In effect, Picou, then chairman and CEO of Real Times, Inc., led what was then labeled a "Sengstacke family-led" deal to facilitate trust beneficiaries and other Sengstacke family shareholders to agree to the sale of the company. Picou recruited Sam Logan, former publisher of the
Michigan Chronicle
, who then recruited O'Neil Swanson, Bill Pickard, Ron Hall and Gordon Follmer, black businessman from
Detroit, Michigan
(the "Detroit Group"), as investors in Real Times. Chicago investors included Picou, Bobby Sengstacke, David M. Milliner (who served as publisher of the
Chicago Defender
from 2003 to 2004), Kurt Cherry and James Carr.
In July 2019, the
Chicago Defender
reported that recent print runs had numbered 16,000 but that its digital edition reached almost half a million unique monthly visitors.
[5]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Staples, Brent (January 4, 2016).
"A 'Most Dangerous' Newspaper ('The Defender,' by Ethan Michaeli)"
. Sunday Book Review.
New York Times
. p. 12
. Retrieved
January 10,
2016
.
- ^
a
b
c
"The Chicago Defender"
.
PBS
.
Archived
from the original on July 12, 2000
. Retrieved
September 9,
2019
.
- ^
Streitmatter, Rodger (2001).
Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America
. New York: Columbia University Press. pp.
141
?158.
ISBN
0231122497
.
- ^
a
b
Katz, Brigit (July 9, 2019).
"The 'Chicago Defender,' an Iconic Black Newspaper, to Release Its Last Print Issue"
.
Smithsonian Magazine
.
Archived
from the original on July 9, 2019.
- ^
a
b
"Chicago Defender Moves Iconic News Content Digital"
. Cover Story.
Chicago Defender
. Vol. 114, no. 11. Real Times Media, Inc. July 9, 2019. p. 1.
ISSN
0745-7014
.
Archived
from the original on July 9, 2019.
- ^
Davey, Monica; Eligon, John (July 9, 2019).
"The Chicago Defender, Legendary Black Newspaper, Prints Last Copy"
.
The New York Times
.
ISSN
0362-4331
. Retrieved
July 9,
2019
.
- ^
"Editorial: After 114 forceful years, another evolution for the Chicago Defender"
. Editorial Board.
Chicago Tribune
. July 9, 2019.
Archived
from the original on July 9, 2019
. Retrieved
July 9,
2019
.
- ^
a
b
c
DeSantis, Alan (1998). "Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners: The Chicago Defender and the Great Migration of 1915?1919".
Western Journal of Communication
.
62
(4): 474?511.
doi
:
10.1080/10570319809374621
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Grossman, James (1985). "Blowing the Trumpet: The "Chicago Defender" and Black Migration during World War I".
Illinois Historical Journal
.
78
(2): 82?96.
JSTOR
40191833
.
- ^
"Princess Mysteria Pens Last 'Advice to The Wise'
".
The Chicago Defender
. Chicago. March 22, 1930.
- ^
Best, Wallace.
"Bud Billiken Day Parade"
.
Encyclopedia of Chicago
.
Archived
from the original on June 1, 2023
. Retrieved
June 11,
2007
.
- ^
Moser, Whet (June 10, 2021).
"How the Party of Lincoln Lost Virtually the Entire Black Vote in 88 Years"
.
Chicago Magazine
.
Archived
from the original on July 30, 2016
. Retrieved
September 26,
2023
.
- ^
"Atlanta Daily World"
.
Atlanta Daily World
.
- ^
"The New York Daily Challenge"
.
Manta
.
- ^
"Negro Daily Tells Black Power Advocates That Jews 'battle' for Negro Rights"
.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
. November 15, 1967.
Archived
from the original on March 19, 2022
. Retrieved
April 11,
2019
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Marshall, Jon; Connor, Matthew (2019). "Divided Loyalties: The
Chicago Defender
and Harold Washington's Campaign for Mayor of Chicago".
American Journalism
.
36
(4): 447?472.
doi
:
10.1080/08821127.2019.1683405
.
S2CID
213833724
.
- Michaeli, Ethan (2016).
The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America
. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
ISBN
978-0547560694
.
- Washburn, Patrick S. (2006).
The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom
. Northwestern University Press.
; covers 1827?1900; emphasis on
Pittsburgh Courier
and the
Chicago Defender
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
Newspapers
| |
---|
Related topics
| |
---|
African American press
|
---|
Newspapers
| Active
| Northeast
| |
---|
South
| |
---|
Midwest
| |
---|
West
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
|
---|
Defunct
| |
---|
|
---|
Magazines
| |
---|
Organizations
| |
---|
Corporations
| |
---|
Related
| |
---|
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|