- Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1910
Abbott Robt S printer h 3159 S State
Lee Mrs H h 3159 S State
Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1911
Abbott Robt S printer h 3159 S State
Lee Henrietta P wid Robt h 3159 S State
BUILDING THE BLACK PRESS.
by The Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender was founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, an African American lawyer and entrepreneur. It would go on to become one of the most widely distributed and influential Black publications in modern history, helping to reshape Black life in Chicago, across the United States, and internationally.
Abbott was born in 1870 in Georgia, and became interested in printmaking at a young age. He studied printing at the Hampton Institute in Virginia between 1892 and 1896. Following his graduation Abbott moved North to attend the Kent College of Law in Chicago, and received a law degree from that institution in 1898. Abbott spent a number of years attempting to establish himself in the legal profession, working in Gary, Indiana, and then Topeka, Kansas, before returning to Georgia. However, opportunities to develop his career as a lawyer remained fleeting, with his dark complexion and strong Southern accent proving significant barriers to his advancement in the profession.
Frustrated, Abbott returned to the Windy City, where he switched his attentions to his earliest passion – the field of publishing. 1905 brought with it the first issue of the Chicago Defender: a four-page, six-column folded sheet which Abbott had cobbled together at a card table set up in the room he rented from Henrietta Lee at 3159 South State Street, with an initial investment of 25 cents and a press run of 300 copies. It would remain the newspaper’s base of operations for more than 15 years. The Chicago Defender’s first issues were in the form of four-page, six-column handbills, filled with local news items gathered by Abbott and clippings from other newspapers. Five years later, the Chicago Defender began to attract a national audience.
By the start of World War I, the Chicago Defender was the nation’s most influential Black weekly newspaper, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago. During World War I, the paper utilized its influence to wage a successful campaign in support of “The Great Migration.” It published blazing editorials, articles and cartoons lauding the benefits of the North, posted job listings and train schedules to facilitate relocation, and declared on May 15, 1917 as the date of the “Great Northern Drive.” the Chicago Defender’s support of The Great Migration caused Southern readers to migrate to the North in record numbers. Between 1916 and 1918, at least 110,000 people migrated to Chicago, nearly tripling the city’s Black population. Following the war, the Defender covered controversial events such as the Red Summer Riots of 1919, a series of race riots in cities across the country. The Chicago Defender campaigned for anti-lynching legislation and for integrated sports. In 1923, the Chicago Defender introduced the Bud Billiken Page, the first newspaper section just for children. The Chicago Defender along with the Chicago Defender Charities, is the producer and organizer of the world famous Bud Billiken Day Parade and Picnic. The parade originated in 1929 as a vehicle to showcase children. Today, the Bud Billiken Parade is the largest event of its kind. Columnists at the Defender included Walter White and Langston Hughes. The paper also published the early works by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Heralding itself as the “The World’s Greatest Weekly,” the Defender spoke out against segregation of the armed forces in the early 40s and actively challenged segregation in the South during the civil rights era. In 1940, John H. H. Sengstacke, Abbott’s nephew and heir, assumed editorial control and continued to champion for equality. In 1956, the Chicago Defender began publishing on a daily basis. In 1965, Stengstacke purchased The Pittsburgh Courier, including it in his “Sengstacke Newspaper chain,” along with papers like the Michigan Chronicle in Detroit and the Tri-State Defender in Memphis. Sengstacke served as publisher of the Defender until his death in May 1997. The Chicago Defender is the flagship publication of Real Times Inc., a media company that also includes among its holdings the Michigan Chronicle, the Front Page, the New Pittsburgh Courier, and the Tri-State Defender. One hundred and four years later, the Chicago Defender won the prestigious John B. Russwurm Award during 2009’s National Newspaper Publishers Association Merit Awards Gala, along with two first place and two third place awards, including the John H. Sengstacke General Excellence Award.
- The Chicago Race Riots of 1919 in the Black Belt corridor. Red Arrow indicated location of The Chicago Defender newspaper office at 3159 S State.
- NORTHWARD BOUND
Laborers waiting for the third section of the labor trains northward bound on the outskirts of Savannah, Ga. The exodus of labor from the South has caused much alarm among the Southern whites, who have failed to treat them decent. The men, tired of being kicked and cursed, are leaving by the thousands as the picture shows.
Chicago Defender, October 7, 1916
The other fellow is seldom in a position where he can decide what is best for you to do when the subject under consideration is a personal one. Yet the great “I AMS” of the Wilsonian type who live in the land of cotton and sugar cane, essay to tell the wishy-washy northerner that they know best how to deal with the Colored people, having summered and wintered with them for dozens of years. And in the past owing to the fact that the north, east and west had but a few of the people in question in their midst, they swallowed this southern canard and stood for the treatment accorded them, brutal as it was, believing, as they were told, the punishment only fitted the crimes.
Horrible pictures were painted and sent for northern consumption, of “big, black brutes” committing some imaginary crime and for the sake of southern womanhood how the chivalrous mob wreaked vengeance on the culprit. As dastardly, as revolting and as inhuman as these scenes were, they were enicted! it a distance and didn’t strike the northerner as forcibly as they do now, when from personal contact they know the Colored citizen is just as good in respect as the white citizen. That is why the hue and cry is going up that the south needs reformation and needs it badly.
Every black man for the sake of his wife and daughters especially should 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. We know full well that this would almost mean a depopulation of that section and if it were possible we would glory in its accomplishment. Some people only appreciate the value of a thing after it has gone, which is undoubtedly true of the southerners la mass. Some, however, are beginning in see the light as is evidenced by the following truthful editorial which appeared in a southern paper:
- The north, the east and the west are absorbing uncounted thousands of strong, industrious Colored people into their great unskilled labor crucible. There are those who say they’ll come back quickly enough. But that isn’t true. Ellis Island will not clear labor into this country again for at least one full generation, possible two. So year after year the labor markets of the continent will call for men, and year after year the south will be ravished of her long established, ideally fitted labor supply to meet the needs of the hour in other parts. WE MUST HAVE THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH. HE HAS BEEN WITH US SO LONG THAT OUR WHOLE INDUSTRIAL, COMMERCIAL AND AGRICULTURAL STRUCTURE HAS BEEN BUILT ON A BLACK FOUNDATION. IT IS THE ONLY LABOR WE HAVE, IT IS THE BEST WE POSSIBLY COULD HAVE-IF WE LOSE IT, WE GO BANKRUPT.
The writer goes further and says that everybody seems to be asleep about what is going on right under their nose; with their very solvency being sucked out from underneath they go about their affairs as usual. The police officers raid pool rooms for “loafing Negroes,” bring in twelve, keep them in the barracks all night, and next morning find that ten of them have steady, regular jobs, and that they were there merely to spend an hour in the only indoor recreation they have; and again their county officers hear of a disturbance and without investigation bring in fifty odd men, women, boys and girls to spend the night in a jail, to make bond at 10 per cent, to hire layers, to mortgage half of two months’ wages to get back on their jobs—Monday morning—although but a bare half dozen could have been guilty of the disorderly conduct. It must take an awful lot of real gall for even a semi-intelligent southerner to say, “The south knows best how to care for the Negro.”
Chicago Defender, May 5, 1917
THE GREAT NORTHERN DRIVE STARTS TODAY!
Race men and women: it is time to take matters into your own hands to escape the unviable conditions of the South. If you still reside where the lynching of the neighbor boy is public entertainment, where you do not profit from the crop you pick, or where your child gets textbooks from white school dumpsters, it is time to demand more.
It is time to get fed up with the blatant segregation and dehumanization. The treatment of Race members by southern people does not warrant staying. Join your northern Race counterparts who are profiting from the thriving northern industry. A different life is not out of reach. Today marks the official beginning of the Great Northern Drive and it is up to you to be a part of it. This movement is about preserving the lives of Race men and women and improving the quality of those lives by practicing rights that are lawfully ours.
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.
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