The Chicago Defender

The Nation’s Most Influential Black Newspaper

A black newsboy distributing the Chicago Defender in April 1942, superimposing a 1919 headline from the paper. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Founded on May 5, 1905, by Robert Sengstacke Abbott with an initial investment of only 25 cents, the Chicago Defender rose to become the most influential black newspaper in the country, and the most widely circulated among blacks. Self-proclaimed “The World’s Greatest Weekly,” the Chicago Defender made a lasting impact and reached a large readership well beyond the borders of its home city and state. Two-thirds of the paper’s customers lived outside of Chicago. Abbott managed to extend its circulation by employing the services of Pullman porters who created a network of distribution along various train routes throughout the country and well into the slave South, where his paper was forbidden.

Abbott had all intentions of becoming a lawyer, but the law degree he received from Chicago’s Kent College of Law in 1898 proved useless. He was unable to practice due to racial prejudice. Even valiant attempts at opening a private law firm in Gary, Indiana; Topeka, Kansas; and Chicago, Illinois failed. Abbott also did not pass the bar exam in Illinois. Before his interests shifted to the legal field, Abbott learned the printing trade, which he got a taste of in his youth when he worked as a printer’s devil—an apprentice at a printing company. He was also inspired by his stepfather John Sengstacke, who launched a local paper, the Woodville Times, in 1889.

When he was 21, Abbott attended Hampton Institute in Virginia to learn the printing trade. He completed Hampton’s printing course four years later, and the required academic work for a bachelor’s in 1896. He worked as a part-time printer and teacher for a short period before enrolling at Kent College, but he returned to Chicago and the printing field when his legal venture fizzled. With 25 cents, Abbott managed a press run of 300 initial copies of the Chicago Defender. His headquarters was a small apartment owned by his landlady, Henrietta Plumer Lee. Abbott wrote, printed, and folded the four-page, six-column paper himself, then proceeded to distribute copies door-to-door throughout the growing black community in Chicago.

Three fairly successful black newspapers were already being published in Chicago—the Broad Ax, the Conservator, and the Illinois Idea—yet Abbott was determined to add his voice to the crowded mix. Newsstand sales would not come for another seven years. In the meantime, Abbott doggedly pursued newsworthy material, tirelessly solicited companies for advertising, and he enlisted others to aid in the distribution effort. 

When the paper almost folded after its first few months in existence, Abbott’s landlady, Henrietta, stepped in and moved Abbott’s newspaper operation to the dining room of her apartment on the second floor of her State Street building. The Chicago Defender slowly bounced back, and as it grew, the operation swelled beyond the walls of the dining room and eventually encompassed the entire building at 3159 State Street. The building remained the paper’s official headquarters for the next 15 years. In 1918, Abbott expressed his gratitude to Henrietta for her support by buying her an eight-room brick house.

A later portrait of Robert S. Abbott. Courtesy of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

The Chicago Defender was essentially a one-man printing press for several years, and Abbott was not able to pay himself a salary. Contributions by others were also unpaid, whether they came in the form of outside reporting, news items collected out-of-town, or the occasional editorial. Black railroad employees often gathered printed materials passengers left behind in the passenger cars, which Abbot culled for news that would interest his black readership. Things changed in 1910, the year Abbott was finally able to afford his first full-time employee, managing editor J. Hockley Smiley. Hockley’s efforts helped the paper attract a wider audience, as the articles began to incorporate news related to the nation at large. 

To sell more papers, articles were written in a militant and sensational manner, with bold headlines, graphic images, and red ink used to highlight racial injustice and inequality across the landscape. This was a tactic called yellow journalism. Lynchings, rapes, assaults, and all manner of evil inflicted on the black community were denounced in unmistakable language. Given its unapologetic approach, the paper was not supported by national distributors. Smiley proposed that Abbott enlist porters, theater people, and waiters to carry bundles of paper into the streets and throughout the country. 

Despite the actions of the Klu Klux Klan, who attempted to seize bundles of the paper and threatened those who read it, the Chicago Defender was read insatiably by blacks in the slave South, its biggest market outside of Chicago. While it started at the bottom, the Chicago Defender soon outsold its three main rivals. By 1916, it was being distributed to 71 cities and towns across the country, and powerhouse writers like Ida B. Wells-Barnett (who covered lynchings and riots) were on staff. Abbott and Smiley also refashioned the Chicago Defender, extending the format to include sports, theater, society, and editorial departments, a first for a black newspaper. Another first was reaching a circulation of over 100,000 readers each week.

The paper’s influence reached its full height during World War I, when, beginning on October 7, 1916, it launched a campaign to lure blacks from the South with an editorial page announcing, “Farewell, Dixie Land.” This was a call for: 

“every black man for the sake of his wife and daughter to leave even at a financial sacrifice every spot in the south where his worth is not appreciated enough to give him the standing of a man and a citizen in the community.” 

Many blacks in the South who read the Chicago Defender heeded the call. Between 1916 and 1919, between 200,000 and 400,000 blacks migrated to free states in the North in the Great Migration, over 100,000 descending on Chicago alone. This nearly tripled Chicago’s black population by 1920. Throughout the ongoing campaign, articles in the paper pointed out the dangers blacks faced by remaining in the South while highlighting the benefits of living in the North. 

President Harry S. Truman (left), John H. Sengstacke (center), and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley (right) in the 1956 Bud Billiken Parade. Photo courtesy of the Abbott-Sengstacke Family Papers/Chicago Public Library.

As Abbott began to age, he looked to an heir to take the reins of the paper. He found one in his favored nephew John H. Sengstacke, who assumed control of the Chicago Defender in 1940 and furthered Abbott’s vision. Among his many contributions, Sengstacke is noted for championing the cause of integration. In 1948, his efforts paid off, when President Harry S. Truman integrated the U. S. Armed Forces through an Executive Order.

The fate of the paper was impacted when the ensuing Civil Rights movement ignited news coverage of black oppression and inequality throughout the country. With the mainstream media now focusing on black issues, black newspapers, like the Chicago Defender, saw a sharp dip in circulation. By the 1970s, the paper’s readership dwindled to under 40,000. John Sengstacke stayed on as publisher until May 1997, the month he passed away. Upon his death, ownership passed to Sengstacke’s heirs. But in 2003, the Chicago Defender, as well as its sister publications, were sold to Real Times Media, LLC, a company founded by a consortium of business leaders from Chicago and Detroit.

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This article appears in 45 People, Places, and Events in Black History You Should Know.

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