The Chicago Defender

The Chicago Defender, which became the world’s largest black newspaper.


Robert S. Abbott started the Chicago Defender in 1905 with just twenty-five cents.
February 26, 2008 -- Today’s page looks at the Chicago Defender, which became the world’s largest black newspaper.

The Chicago Defender was founded by Robert S. Abbott on May 5, 1905, and lauded itself as the "world’s greatest weekly." The Defender was the nation’s most influential black weekly newspaper at the start of World War I. Abbott started the paper with 25 cents and 300 copies, working out of a small kitchen in his landlord’s Chicago apartment.

The first editions were handbills containing local news items gathered mostly from other papers. The Defender did not use the words "black" or "Negro." African-Americans were referred to as "the Race." It was militant in its decry of racial injustice and famous for blazing headlines and graphic images that depicted the injustices blacks suffered in the United States, including lynchings. The paper soon attracted national attention.

The Defender provided firsthand coverage of the infamous Red Summer Race Riots of 1919, which broke out in cities across the country.
The paper was in full support of the Great Migration (1915-1925), urging Southern blacks to leave the racially oppressive South and head North for better opportunities. The paper featured job listings and train schedules, and referred to the famed migration as the "Great Northern Drive." More than 110,000 blacks came to Chicago alone, nearly tripling the city’s African-American population.

It was no surprise that distributors in the South refused to circulate the paper. The Defender was smuggled in by Pullman porters and entertainers, passed from person to person and read aloud in barber shops and churches. The Chicago Defender was the first black newspaper to have a circulation of more than 100,000, a health column and a full page of comics.

Famed writers Langston Hughes and Walter White were columnists. The paper also published the early poems of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks.
Abbott’s nephew and heir, John H. Sengstacke, took over the paper in 1940 and continued its policy of championing full equality for African-Americans. Among his accomplishments were influencing President Harry Truman to issue an order ending segregation in the military and helping to integrate Chicago’s city government.

Sengstacke became the first president of the National Negro Publishers Association, an organization founded to establish unity among the black newspapers. There are more than 200 black newspaper members in the organization, known today as the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

On Feb. 6, 1956, The Defender became the Chicago Daily Defender, the largest black-owned and-operated daily in the world.

Sengstacke established his own newspaper empire with Detroit’s Michigan Chronicle, the Tri-State Defender in Memphis, Tenn., and the Pittsburgh Courier. He served as publisher of the Defender until his death in May of 1977.

On Feb. 13, the Chicago Defender returned to its roots as a weekly publication, but its mission to serve the African-American community remains as strong as it has always been.

Source:By JASMIN K. WILLIAMS