Robert S. Abbott was editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender—one of the longest surviving, widely circulated, and politically active black newspapers in the United States. Abbott was a pivotal force at the turn of the twentieth century because of the power and influence wielded by his paper. He emerged during the first Chicago Literary Renaissance, a movement that was initially launched by white literary figures from around 1912 through the 1930s and included those such as Carl Sandburg, Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, Edna Ferber, Willa Cather, and Upton Sinclair. A second wave of this movement dominated by black literary figures occurred from the 1930s through the 1950s and included those such as Richard Wright, Willard Motley, Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes (more generally associated with the Harlem Renaissance), Gwendolyn Brooks, and others. Abbott evolved during the first phase of the renaissance, paralleling his white contemporaries in that he shared their vision of radicalism while at the same time being drawn to the more rural life and settings from which he had escaped. Interestingly, some of the literary figures associated with the early movement such as Dreiser and Sandburg had begun their writing careers as journalists prior to launching their literary authorships. Yet, for the black literary figures who emerged in the second phase of this movement, Abbott’s newspaper became an important voice in foregrounding issues that plagued the black community, established a sense of race consciousness, and instilled a sense of pride in blacks—themes that would be reverberated in the works of black writers of the Chicago Renaissance. Abbott’s newspaper, the Defender, and his short-lived magazine, Abbott’s Monthly, were greatly influenced by this movement as much as they were vehicles that helped to shape the doctrines articulated in the works of the black literary figures produced by this movement.
Abbott established his newspaper to appeal to the masses of blacks who had fled the South and headed northward to seek a better life. His newspaper was designed to elevate these new black immigrants, to give voice to those disenfranchised, and to mobilize the black population facing lives of uncertainty. Promoting social and political change, even while espousing positions that were sometimes unpopular, Abbott had a tremendous impact on the evolution of black progress and development, not only in Chicago but throughout the country.
Robert S. Abbott was born to former slaves Thomas Abbott and Flora Butler Abbott, on November 28, 1868. As a slave, Thomas had been a butler to Captain Charles Stevens of Frederica, Georgia, whose family plantation had been established by Stevens’s father in 1784, on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Granted his freedom, Thomas Abbott migrated to Savannah, Georgia, and in 1867 he met and married Flora Butler (born December 4, 1847 to former slaves Harriet and Jacob Butler of Savannah). Returning to Frederica, one year later, Flora and Thomas had Robert (28 November 1868). (Roi Ottley claims that Robert was born November 24, 1870, yet the Parish Register of St. Stephens Episcopal Church where he was baptized reports that he was born November 28, 1868.) Within a year of Robert’s birth, Thomas died suddenly of tuberculosis. It was not until 1928 that Robert learned of his father’s actual burial place in Frederica, where he erected a monument at the gravesite.
Following Thomas’s death, Flora returned to Savannah with Robert, but because of the strained interfamily relationship with the Abbotts, she had to seek legal counsel to retain custody. At this point, John Hermann Henry Sengstacke, a German mulatto immigrant, was also in Savannah, reclaiming his inheritance left by his white father and black mother. Sengstacke assisted Flora and paid for a white attorney to defend her in her custody dispute. On July 26, 1874, Sengstacke became Flora’s second husband, and Robert’s stepfather; Robert became Robert Sengstacke Abbott. The new family moved to Yamacraw, a black settlement containing property previously owned by John’s white father.
John first worked as a translator for the Savannah Morning News until his racial identity was revealed. Next, John pursued teaching and preaching and became a missionary in Woodville’s Pilgrim Congregational Church in 1876. In Woodville, a suburb of Savannah, Robert spent much of his early years with his new siblings (Alexander, Mary, Rebecca, Johnnah, and Eliza).
At first, young Robert worked as an errand boy at a local grocery and then he worked for The Echo, a Savannah newspaper. As an adolescent in preparation for college, Abbott attended the Beach Institute in Savannah (started by the Freedman’s Bureau and named after the editor of the Scientific American) and worked as a printer’s assistant on a local daily newspaper. Encountering some of the most blatant forms of intraracial prejudice, Robert transferred to Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, on October 6, 1887; six months later, he applied to Hampton Institute, and while awaiting admission, returned to work with The Echo and wrote for the Savannah Tribune. In 1889, when his stepfather was launching the Woodville Times, Abbott entered Hampton Institute, intent upon becoming a printer. While at Hampton, Robert became a member of their quartet, joined the debating society, and founded the Georgia Boys Association. In 1893, he completed his training as a printer; he finished his academic work some three years later in 1896 and became a lifelong member of the alumni association.
After graduation, Robert returned to Woodville, assisted with the publication of Sengstacke’s paper, and taught at a nearby school. In the fall of 1897, Robert decided to study law. Enrolling as Robert Sengstacke Abbott, he entered the Kent College of Law in Chicago—a place where he had observed black progress unlike what he had witnessed in the South. In May of 1899, he received a Bachelor of Law degree, but he was never admitted to the Illinois bar. Discouraged from practicing law in Chicago because of racial ostracism, Robert ventured to Topeka, Kansas, where he again met racial obstacles. He returned to Chicago, but this time with a contract to distribute copies of the Topeka Plaindealer newspaper, and received help from a Chicago politician, Louis B. Anderson, who assisted Robert in obtaining employment with the Loop printing house of Chicago.
On June 23, 1904, Robert’s career was briefly interrupted when his stepfather, John Sengstacke, died of nephritis. Abbott, desiring to carry out his stepfather’s mission by providing legal counsel to those who remained deprived while continuing to provide education to indigent blacks, returned to the South. Having gathered the necessary funds from his siblings and obtaining assistance from a former teacher, he established the Sengstacke Memorial Military and Mechanical Academy in the Pilgrim Academy, formerly operated by his stepfather.
Returning to Chicago shortly thereafter, Robert pursued his dream of starting his own newspaper. First working as a printer and typesetter for local papers, he ingratiated himself with Chicago’s social world and joined the Choral Study Club, which proved to be central to the establishment of his paper. He boarded with Henrietta Lee (a widow and mother of three and a strong supporter when he established his paper). Renting office space from a local businessman, and relying on his landlord’s daughter for assistance, Abbott printed the first issue of the Chicago Defender, May 5, 1905, with the “oft-repeated pledge that his paper would be a defender of his race, [James] Scott [an associate suggested the name] ‘The Defender.’ [As] Abbott [added] the word ‘Chicago,’ the paper acquired the name that was to become a torch to thousands.”1
From May 1905, the Defender was published continuously, and it is still being published today. Examining its issues over the years (the earliest extant issue of the paper is September 16, 1905), its format and style paralleled that of the Woodville Times started by Sengstacke and the early issues were devoted to “community and Negro achievement.”2 According to Ottley, “If Negroes had problems of a social or racial character, they were not apparent in the Defender; nor were there any accounts of accidents, suicides, murders, trials, or incidents of racial discrimination, lynching or conflict—sensational news which was eventually to distinguish Abbott’s journalism.”3 Initially, Abbott intended to appeal to the 40,000 blacks who resided in Chicago and printed some 300 copies of a 4-page paper, in handbill size. Until 1912, Abbott served as writer, editor, journalist, and distributor; then the paper expanded to newsstand sales. Struggling to survive financially, he had to move the office to his landlady’s home. In later years, Abbott placed the operations of his now expanded paper into that same building, but on the second and third floor, attributing his success to this location.
Not until 1909, when Abbott “launched his first muck-raking crusade did his paper actually begin to catch on with the public,”4 and eventually outstrip his competitors such as the Broad Ax, Illinois Idea, Conservator, Indianapolis Freeman, and New York Age. Abbott’s exposure of the crime and corruption that infiltrated Chicago—as when prostitution, supported by alliances that existed between politicians and criminals, invaded black neighborhoods—now took a “stand,” and solidified the black community. “The Defender utilized the ‘wages of sin’ theme in several editorial cartoons. One depicted a venomous snake bearing the name ‘Social Degeneration’ as it uncoiled itself menacingly from a can of beer.”5 In opposing such degradation and working to prevent the moral decay and decline of the community, Abbott recognized that his paper had become a vehicle of empowerment.
As circulation increased, Abbott solicited the assistance of additional (but unpaid) workers, such as R. F. Spriggs (assistant editor), L. N. Hogatt (cartoonist) and H. H. Byron (theatrical editor). He also recruited community members including Henry Middleton (covering political and social events), Julius Nelthrop Avendorph (sports reports), Noah Thompson (news from Los Angeles), Fon Holly and Langston Mitchell (cartoonists), Alfred Anderson (editorials), Frank George (news relevant to blacks outside of Chicago), and W. Allison Sweeney (exploring information about the antiblack politicians in Chicago).
The Defender had become a centrifugal force of the Black Press, which by 1910 totaled some 288 periodicals throughout the United States, with a combined circulation of some half million. Because of the Defender in particular and the Black Press in general, illiteracy rates in 1910 had declined from 44.5 percent in 1900 to 30.4 percent. Expanding his operations, in 1910 Abbott added J. Hockley Smiley to his staff as managing editor. By adopting Chicago newspapers’ daily paper style and introducing techniques of yellow journalism, the Defender achieved a new level of success. Smiley encouraged Abbott to change the format of the paper, adopt banner headlines, provide a sensational treatment of news, and express black concerns and fears. Abbott’s competitors reacted with contempt to these changes—for example, his use of headlines printed in red ink—but it was these changes that had increased circulation, and his paper was hailed as the “the world’s greatest weekly.”6 Despite these changes, Abbott did not deviate from his basic principles that included eliminating discrimination; lobbying for black admission into trade unions; supporting black representation in the president’s cabinet; promoting equality in public service positions, government jobs, and schools; abolishing lynching; and securing the full enfranchisement of all Americans. It is such principles that would later permeate the writings of black literary figures. Smiley encouraged the paper to address relevant issues: for example, how blacks should refer to themselves—Negro, Colored, Afro-American, Aframerican, African, or Black. They often resolved this dilemma by employing the term “Race,” though the paper would use many of the aforementioned terms interchangeably as long as they did not diminish the dignity of the race.
Adopting this new format and exploiting issues of relevance to the black community propelled the paper to explore a wide range of topics. One topic was the July 4, 1910, victory of the first black heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson, over his white opponent, Jim Jeffries. The Defender called Johnson a symbol of black defiance to counter the white supremacists’ views. Although the paper exacerbated the divide between blacks and whites and reportedly encouraged altercations between the two groups, the paper gained in popular appeal and found Johnson newsworthy throughout his career.
By 1915, increasing newspaper sales again forced Abbott to expand his operations. He hired Phil Jones, Fay Young, Sylvester Russell, and others and began a crusade to defend the black screen image. When The Birth of a Nation (1915), a motion picture based on The Klansman authored by Thomas Dixon and produced by D. W. Griffith, was released, the Defender played an active role in the protests staged to halt the picture’s exhibition and reported on riots erupting in many northern cities. Among those who joined the Defender in publicly denouncing the film was Jane Addams, the prominent white Chicagoan who had established the Hull House, which was designed to improve the plight of the impoverished.
During this same year, the Defender reported on the death of Booker T. Washington, one of Abbott’s mentors. And although he supported Washington, he did not alienate Washington’s adversary W. E. B. DuBois, choosing rather to establish a compromise between the two. As Ottley pointed out, “While Washington urged Negroes ‘to cast down your buckets where you are’—meaning remain in the South—Abbott cried: ‘Come North, where there is more humanity, some justice and fairness!’ And while DuBois sought to create a ‘talented tenth,’ or educated elite, to lead the race, Abbott declared himself, ‘for the masses, not the classes!’”7
Interested in the women’s suffrage movement, Abbott crusaded to have black women become members of the Chicago police force. By 1916 three black women had passed the police examination and one was eventually appointed to the police force. This action was part of the Defender’s overall endorsement of women’s suffrage as it urged black women to become more involved in this movement.
Centering itself in the struggle for equal rights, in 1916, the Defender expressed outrage at the fact that members of the Tenth Cavalry Regiment (an all-black regiment) had been subjected to hostility in Houston, Texas, on their return from Mexico. The paper warned that race riots might ensue. A rampage did occur in Houston, when black troops of the Twenty-fourth Infantry Regiment engaged in an altercation with whites; whites were killed, blacks were hanged, and other blacks were imprisoned for life. The reporting on this event allegedly increased the paper’s circulation by some 20,000, a number that continued to increase with the Defender’s exposure of atrocities such as the lynchings of blacks, and with the encouraging of blacks to defend themselves. In addition to such reporting, Abbott’s practical management strategies such as hiring newsboys to distribute his paper, further heightened circulation figures.
Abbott’s campaign to encourage blacks to leave the South and migrate northward was endorsed by Pullman porters, dining car waiters, and stage performers. According to Metz Lochard (Abbott’s first foreign editor), “The South was a bad place, Abbott told them, and he flooded his columns with vivid descriptions of the most distasteful aspects of living in the South. Abbott dared to articulate in print what southern Negroes were afraid to whisper. He gave them courage to acknowledge their dissatisfaction, and some sense of security by telling them that others were championing their cause and could give them protection in the city that was the home of the Defender.”8 With 65,000 blacks migrating to Chicago between 1917 and 1918, its black population jumped from 40,000 to 150,000 within a short period of time, causing whites to view Abbott and his paper as subversive.
When Abbott lobbied against the paucity of black soldiers during WW I, the War Department itself investigated the paper’s policies. Although the newspaper surveillance began earlier “in the fall of 1916 when a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, probing allegations that the Chicago weekly was inciting blacks against whites, passed his suspicions on to the Bureau of Investigation, … the Defender immediately came under renewed scrutiny once the United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917.”9 Interrogated by the Bureau’s Chicago office, Abbot claimed that despite his exposure of racial atrocities, there was no intent of disloyalty to the government and that he had encouraged blacks to purchase war bonds. Abbott’s paper by now had developed a nationwide reputation.
On September 10, 1918, Abbott married a widow from Athens, Georgia, Helen Thornton Morrison. A woman thirty years his junior, she was so fair in complexion that she was often mistaken for white. Their childless marriage lasted fourteen years.
In 1919, the “Red Summer” ensued in Chicago—heightened racial tensions and lynchings resulted in riots as blacks competed with whites for low-wage jobs. Riots were precipitated by a black swimmer crossing the racial line in Chicago’s Lake Michigan, being stoned by whites, and drowning. A series of riots occurred and involved some 10,000 persons and lasted for nearly twelve days. The politically astute Defender assumed the authority to speak for, as well as to, the African American community and called for blacks to engage in restraint. The liberal Daily News, by commissioning Carl Sandburg, “attempted to speak for the assured political and cultural leadership of a white post-immigrant community.”10 In a Commission on Race Relations (viewed with suspicion by DuBois), the Governor, Frank O. Lowden, appointed Abbott among others to examine the issues that caused these riots.
In the year following the riots (1920), the Defender’s 30,000 circulation represented the largest circulation ever achieved by a black paper, with two-thirds of its circulation outside of Chicago. The Defender expanded to thirty-two pages, with city and national editions. To accommodate its expanding operations, Abbott purchased a three-story building that had been a former synagogue and hired Clarence Brown (white) as plant foreman. Brown then established a union shop (a union that refused admission to blacks) and hired a crew of white workers, a move that initially fared well but would later cause anguish for Abbott, even though his paper in 1921 was evaluated at $500,000, with sixty-eight paid workers and branch offices in New York, Detroit, Toledo, Louisville, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, in addition to foreign offices in London and Paris.
With an ever-expanding work force, Abbott continued broadening his publishing, in content as well as circulation. Each decade he concentrated on the focus and issues of the period—social, political, and cultural. As for the political, during this period, the Defender paid particular attention to Marcus Garvey, founder of the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) and The Negro World. Garvey’s views on black nationalism and his back-to-Africa movement appealed to millions of blacks disillusioned with race as it existed in the United States. Though in some respects, Garvey and Abbott shared many similarities as well as differences, when Abbott suspected and implied that Garvey paralleled another black leader who had defrauded blacks with his scheme to return blacks to Africa, there was a sharp split. Garvey filed a libel suit against Abbott for one million dollars but, as Ottley pointed out, “The New York courts awarded him [Garvey] a one-cent victory, but he was obliged to pay court costs.”11 When Garvey tried to launch his campaign in Chicago, he was promptly arrested for selling stock in the Black Star Steamship Line; this was a violation of Illinois law. Garvey accused Abbott of conspiring in his arrest; later the Defender reported on Garvey’s legal struggles and his deportation.
Meanwhile, Abbott, now a self-made millionaire, enjoyed many luxuries, including a Rolls Royce (an automobile disallowed to blacks). He also traveled to South America, about which he wrote a series of articles for his paper. Abbott became one of the few black journalists in the United States to cover this region. According to Lochard, “He … indulged in somewhat fanciful sentimentality in recalling his trips to Europe and Latin America. He especially liked the fact that these people did not refer to him as a ‘Negro,’ and he wrote glowingly of the ‘unity, peace, and contentment’ that resulted, he reasoned, from the lack of racial distinctions. He wishfully generalized from his limited experiences, but he was justified in his accusation that the United States discriminated more abominably than any nation outside of perhaps South Africa.”12
Abbott’s successes were often followed by failures and disappointments, some resulting from financial abuses by staff. He was forced to dismiss members of his staff including his manager, Phil Jones, to whom he had entrusted his paper’s operation while he temporarily abandoned publication of his magazine. But he recovered from these setbacks, and continued to publish issues relevant to the black community.
As for the cultural aspect, the 1920s that coincided with the first Chicago Literary Renaissance, and specifically, the 1920–25 period, was a beginning of the rise in and acknowledgment of black writing and black films—the black literary figures authoring the books upon which the films were scripted; the black actors and actresses taking lead roles; and the black producers, publicists, and theater-owners paving their way. It was at this time that black author Charles W. Chesnutt’s novel, The House Behind the Cedars (1900), was being produced by black filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux, and was being serialized in the Defender as a promotional device for the similarly titled film.
The Chicago Defender was also instrumental in influencing literary figure Willard Motley, a native of Chicago who, at the age of thirteen, submitted a short story to the Defender that was printed in some three installments in 1922. Later, Motley as a youngster, wrote the Bud Bulliken column designed to appeal to the Defender’s young readers from 1922 to 1924. Some of his columns reflected his race pride as well as an acknowledgment of human suffering. That Abbott’s paper provided such literary figures with the opportunity to cultivate their writing talent speaks to Abbott’s support of black literary figures in the Chicago Renaissance.
Black authors, essayists, dramatists, poets; black actors, actresses, filmmakers; singers, musicians; artists—all took their place alongside their white colleagues, equals in talent, and equals as participants, to give rise to the consecutive movements of the Chicago Renaissance. And the Chicago Defender was there to take note, to report, to disseminate their views.
In the 1925–30 period, the Defender continued to focus on political issues as well as turned its attention to the Pullman porters’ struggle for equitable wages. In 1925, A. Philip Randolph attempted to organize the Pullman porters and formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. When reports surfaced that bribes were offered to civic leaders and ministers to oppose the union organization, Randolph criticized the Defender for its antiunion policy. Later, Abbott retreated from his original position and supported the porters’ union while applauding Randolph’s efforts, and thus, extending the Defender’s power and influence.
It was during this period, that the Defender noted the achievements of those associated with the Chicago Renaissance as well as the Harlem arts movement and extensively covered prominent artists such as Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson, as well as literary figures Motley and Langston Hughes, who was gaining prominence as a writer publishing his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues (1926), Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), and the novel, Not Without Laughter (1930). These artists and literary figures paved the wave for a subsequent generation.
Emulating these artists whose writings were often informed by their travels, Abbott interrupted his career to engage in travel. In June 1929, he and his wife toured Europe; Abbott reported discrimination (being barred from hotels) but also pleasant experiences, such as laying a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Yet, when he returned to the United States in October 1929, Abbott’s publishing enterprise had become a victim of the 1929 stock market crash.
The years 1930–35 were troubling for Abbott, despite his new magazine venture, Abbott’s Monthly (a forerunner to Ebony Magazine), which achieved an initial circulation of some 100,000. “It contained eight poems; four lengthy, illustrated romance stories; fifteen well-written ‘Special Features’ articles of varying lengths; and numerous photographs, illustrations, news items, book reviews, and bawdy jokes.”13 Some of the magazine’s prominent contributors were Arthur Schomburg, bibliophile and collector of black history; Salem Tutt Whitney, stage performer; and Dr. C. Leon Wilson, physician. Later issues featured works by attorney Clarence Darrow, Langston Hughes, and Chester Himes. The first issue of the magazine was dedicated to Abbott’s stepfather and dissolved after some thirty-six issues—due to the impact of the depression and, some argue, to its overzealous mission. This decline was similarly witnessed by the newspaper, because between 1930 and 1932, the Defender’s circulation decreased from 200,000 to less than 100,000 and the paper lost money for the first time since its widespread growth. At the same time, Abbott was diagnosed with tuberculosis and on September 21, 1932, his mother, Flora, died.
All of these difficulties coincided with Abbott’s divorce from his first wife, Helen, finalized June 26, 1933. The Defender reported the costs: Helen’s award, the largest award ever made to a black woman, was $50,000 cash, an automobile, furnishings from their mansion, and $5,000 in lawyer’s fees. Within a year, Abbott married Edna Brown Denison, a widow (former wife of a distinguished army officer) and the mother of five. Abbott’s divorce also signaled a final-ditch effort at magazine publishing; Abbott’s Weekly and Illustrated News, initially a sixteen-page weekly publication, ceased to exist after March 1934.
Forced to invest $260,000 of his own money in 1935, Abbott kept the Defender financially solvent. The paper’s financial problems were compounded when it became known that while blacks remained unemployed at the Defender, the paper continued to employ whites. This caused consternation for many, forcing Abbott to replace white workers with blacks. Added to this was Abbott’s discovery that the paper’s mismanagement of financial affairs had resulted in a $300,000 loss. Abbott then appointed his nephew, John H. H. Sengstacke, as vice president and treasurer, an appointment which proved vital to the Defender’s continued existence.
The Defender’s change in management did not cause it to shy away from political issues, reporting extensively on the Scottsboro Boys case (involving nine black males who were tried and convicted of raping two white women in Alabama). The Scottsboro case received considerable attention in the Defender, as the paper assumed that the judgment in this case was not just an indictment on these individuals but an indictment on the entire black race.
In this period, Abbott’s paper continued to promote its political views, which often coincided with those of the literary figures who ushered in the Chicago Renaissance such as Hughes, Motley, Richard Wright, and Gwendolyn Brooks. To convey the importance of Abbott’s influence on these literary figures, Hughes revealed that, “As a child in Kansas I grew up on the Chicago Defender and it awakened me in my youth to the problems which I and my race had to face in America. Its flaming headlines and indignant editorials did a great deal to make me the ‘race man’ which I later became, as expressed in my own attitudes and in my writing. Thousands and thousands of other young Negroes were, I am sure, also affected the same way by this militant and stirringly edited Chicago weekly.”14 Hughes, compelled to visit and interview the Scottsboro boys so that he could expose the racial injustice of this case, may have been influenced by the Defender’s coverage of the case.
Although Hughes became a Defender columnist in 1942 after Abbott’s leadership ended, he undoubtedly was influenced by the views of the paper. When Hughes accepted the offer from the Defender as a columnist (an association that continued until the early 1960s), his appointment served two purposes—one, to expose his writings to a broader audience and popularize his works and two, to provide a steady income to a black writer who did not have the financial opportunities afforded to white writers despite his literary success. It was as a columnist for the Defender that Hughes’s political views resounded in the press, and he expanded the exposure of his artistic talent by introducing his well-known fictional character, Jesse B. Simple. Hughes utilized this character to articulate the views and concerns of the working class, which were not so frequently exposed in the daily press: “Through the voice of Simple, Hughes could convey the peculiar experience of being black in America while retaining the emotional distance that fiction allows, a distance perhaps necessary to alleviate some of the pain he felt in his own life.”15
The Defender may have been equally influential in shaping the ideas and providing the social milieu from which Willard Motley’s novel, Knock on Any Door (1947), which focused on an Italian immigrant facing a life of crime and juvenile delinquency, was conceived. Assuming a variety of jobs to sustain his career as a writer, Motley worked for the Chicago Housing Authority—an experience that also might have informed the circumstances faced by his protagonist in the novel and an experience likely exposed on the pages of Abbott’s Defender providing the impetus for his novel. When the novel was transformed on screen, the film was covered extensively by the Defender and Motley was highlighted as a writer.
Such influence can be similarly observed in Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son (1940), a novel for which Wright received widespread literary acclaim, a novel that also focused on a character paralyzed by the circumstances that surrounded him and a novel based on Wright’s own experiences in Chicago. The Defender likely foregrounded the impoverished conditions reconstructed in Wright’s novel and may have helped to expose the environment created in the novel. Aside from the newspaper’s influence on Wright, the Defender provided reviews of Wright’s controversial novel, reported on the novel when it became a play, covered the novel’s film production, and frequently covered Wright’s literary career. The thematic content of the novel often reverberated the ideas and principles articulated by the Defender.
Again, the newspaper’s influence on shaping the ideological views of Gwendolyn Brooks (the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry) cannot be understated. The Defender published some of her early works (her first seventy-five poems) between 1934 and 1936, attesting to the paper’s commitment to exposing the talent of black literary figures as well as the determination to give voice to those literary figures associated with the Chicago Renaissance. Brooks’s writings addressed many of the same issues and conveyed a similar political tone that the Defender appropriated and embraced.
During the 1930s, celebrating the paper’s 35th anniversary, Abbott reiterated the objectives he had established for his paper by stating, “I have been relentless in my campaign against discrimination, lynching and industrial exploitation. I have initiated drives for legislative reforms, battered down regional or sectional segregation, censured members of the Race who would auction off our social and political rights, and condemned Nordism, Ku Klux Klanism and all who would pervert the masses by making the blacks the sick men of American democracy.”16 Abbott’s paper continued its mission during this period, chronicling the careers of black men outstanding in their careers, such as black boxing champion Joe Louis and black jazz musicians Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, and others—black men who impacted this period. The Defender covered the struggles of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the Urban League, and it highlighted leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune (who was appointed to a governmental position during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration).
As he attempted to elevate the masses by delineating the struggles they endured, Abbott was equally critical of blacks themselves: “By telling them what whites did to them, he showed them who and what their common enemies were; by telling them what they were doing for themselves, he demonstrated how they should prepare for the fight.”17 Abbott was widely known for promoting race pride and for urging that black accomplishments and black history should be celebrated—a creed that he adhered to by celebrating black literary figures associated with the Chicago Renaissance.
Abbott, however, while celebratory of blacks, also faced scrutiny from those he defended: “Though he was frequently criticized for taking advertisements to straighten hair and lighten skin, he severely attacked the setting of a standard of desirability for white features.”18 Such outspokenness invited criticism of Abbott himself. Added to these criticisms, Abbott’s class politics were questioned. Lochard contends that, “Despite his urgings for a strong class structure in the Negro community, his friends insist that Abbott remained a humble man close to the people all his life. But others, especially whites and upper-class Negroes, thought him a pompous, conspicuous spender, having a baronial home with a corps of servants and three automobiles.”19
As Abbott’s health declined, suffering with tuberculosis and Bright’s disease, he finalized his last will and testament on December 19, 1939, and died some two months later, on February 29, 1940. Abbott’s body lay in state at his home, 4742 South Parkway; his funeral was held at the Metropolitan Community Church in Chicago, and he was buried at the Lincoln cemetery. A large number of dignitaries—Governor Henry Horner; Mayor Edward J. Kelly; A. Philip Randolph; entertainer Noble Sissle; Dr. Emmett J. Scott, former secretary to Booker T. Washington; and NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White—served as honorary pallbearers.
As specified in his will, the Defender was continued by his nephew, John Sengstacke, who operated the paper from 1940 until his death in 1997. Under Sengstacke’s leadership, the paper recovered from its financial troubles and even expanded its operations. In 1956 the paper became a daily newspaper representing the largest black-owned daily paper in the world. Sengstacke was also instrumental in establishing a chain of papers that included the Gary Defender, National Defender, Tri-State Defender, Michigan Chronicle, Louisville Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, and New York Age Defender. On the newspaper’s fiftieth anniversary, under the direction of Sengstacke the Defender serialized Roi Ottley’s biography of Abbott, Lonely Warrior.
Sengstacke would continue the tradition established by his predecessor of commemorating, applauding, and showcasing the talent of black literary figures. Sengstacke featured many of the black literary figures who were contemporaries and beneficiaries of the Black Chicago Renaissance established by Hughes, Wright, Motley, and Brooks, and he noted the achievements of a later generation such as Lorraine Hansberry (popularized because of her award-winning play A Raisin in the Sun, 1959, based on black life in Chicago) and Chester Himes who, although a contributor to Abbott’s Monthly in the 1930s, would not gain noticeable acclaim as a literary figure until the 1940s with his novels If He Hollers Let Him Go (1946) and Lonely Crusade (1947).
In establishing the newspaper, the Defender, which “combined the conservative tendencies of approval of middle-class values and self-help with radical agitation for civil and political rights,”20 Abbott established himself as one of the single most important forces in journalism, particularly in the Black Press. Because of the power and influence wielded by his paper, he was a significant figure in the Chicago Literary Renaissance. As Abbott challenged the status quo, championed the cause of those disenfranchised, and heralded the achievements of blacks in the Chicago area, he created a significant impact on the Chicago political, social, and artistic landscape—the background for the Chicago Literary Renaissance. A citing of this movement, the Chicago Literary Renaissance, would be less complete without acknowledging the role that Abbott and his paper played in its development.
In addition to the local influence of the Defender, the newspaper was also greatly responsible for national changes and achievements of blacks in the early years of the twentieth century. The publishing enterprise that Abbott established in Chicago and developed over the course of his lifetime throughout the United States is a testament to his will, conviction, and intelligence. Thus, his own words signify his legacy as he stated, “I built up the Defender not only by printing all the news, but also by clinging to the ideas that success could be achieved by recording contemporary documents and public utterances, and by contending for social justice, political rights and industrial equity…. These are things that I have contended for and obtained at the cost of personal sacrifices, against cross current of opposition and intrigue from without and betrayal of trust from within…. For greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his people and of humanity at large.”21
1. Ottley, Roi. The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1955, 87.
2. Ibid., 90.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 97.
5. Stovall, Mary E. “The Chicago Defender in the Progressive Era.” Illinois Historical Journal 83 (Autumn 1990): 166.
6. Ottley, The Lonely Warrior, 188.
7. Ibid., 126.
8. Lochard, Metz T. P. “Phylon Profile, XII: Robert S. Abbott—’Race Leader,’” Phylon 8, 2 (Second Quarter 1947): 125.
9. Kornweibel Jr., Theodore. “Investigate Everything”: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty during World War I. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002, 119–20.
10. Doreski, C. K. “From News to History: Robert Abbott and Carl Sandburg Read the 1919 Chicago Riot,” African American Review 26.4 (Winter 1992): 638.
11. Ottley, 217.
12. Lochard, “Phylon Profile, XII” 129.
13. Amana, Harry. “Robert S. Abbott.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 91. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1990, 4.
14. De Santis, Christopher C., ed. Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942–62. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995, 13–14.
15. Ibid., 15.
16. Abbott, Robert S. “Looking Back,” Chicago Defender, March 2, 1940, 8. This article is a reprint of that which appeared in the Chicago Defender on May 4, 1935, when the newspaper celebrated its thirtieth anniversary.
17. Lochard, “Phylon Profile, XII,’” 131–32.
18. Ibid., 131.
19. Ibid., 132.
20. Stovall, “The Chicago Defender in the Progressive Era,” 172.
21. Abbott, “Looking Back,” 8.
“A Busy Life Come to a Close,” Chicago Defender, March 2, 1940, 8.
Abbott, Robert, S. Robert S. Abbott Papers are primarily located in the Chicago Defender archives. Reports on Abbott appear in other collections such as at the University Archives, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia; National Newspaper Publisher Association Collection, Black Press Archives, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.; Schomburg Research Center in Black Culture, New York City Public Library, New York; Claude A. Barnett Papers, Chicago Historical Society; Mary McLeod Bethune Collection; John H. H. Sengstacke’s (stepfather) diary is housed with the Savannah Historical Society.
Botkin, Joshua. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke.” In Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History Vol. I., Salzman, Jack, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996, 2–3.
Briggs, Johnathon E. and Rob Kaiser. “Whirlwind of Change Blows In at Defender,” Raleigh News and Observer, October 12, 2004.
Chicago Public Library, Journalism, Chicago Renaissance 1932–1950, http://www.chipublib.org/.
Cooper, Caryl A. “The Chicago Defender: Filling In the Gaps for the Office of Civilian Defense, 1941–45.” Western Journal of Black Studies 23.2 (Summer 1999): 111–18.
DeSantis, Alan D. “A Forgotten Leader: Robert S. Abbott and the Chicago Defender from 1910 to 1920.” Journalism History 23.2 (Summer 1997): 63–71.
“Editor Abbott an Inspiration Abroad,” Chicago Defender, March 2, 1940, 9.
Hill, George H. “Robert Abbott: Defender of the Black Press,” in Bulletin of Bibliography 42.1 (March 1985): 53–55.
Jemielity, Sam. “Challenging the Defender: The Nation’s Last Black Daily Struggles to Survive,” http://weeklywire.com/.
Johns, Robert L. “Robert S. Abbott.” In Notable Black American Men, edited by Jessie Carney Smith. Detroit: Gale, 1999, 3–6.
“Making an Impact in Real Time: Real Time Inc. Assumes Ownership of Chicago Defender,” http:www.leadingedgealliance.com/issues_old/2003/spring/realtimes.
“Robert S. Abbott Is Dead: Funeral Rites Monday at Metropolitan Church,” Chicago Defender, March 2, 1940, 1.
“Robert S. Abbott, 69, A Chicago Publisher,” New York Times, March 1, 1940, Schomburg Center Clipping File.
Snorgrass, J. William. “Abbott, Robert Sengstacke.” In Biographical Dictionary of American Journalism, edited by Joseph P. McKerns. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989, 4–6.
Strother, Ella. “The Black Image in the Chicago Defender, 1905–1975.” Journalism History 4:4 (Winter 1977–78): 137–41.
Taylor, Rebecca Stiles. “N.A.C.W. Official Lauds Editor Abbott,” Chicago Defender, March 2, 1940, 9.