In chronicling the history of the African American press in the United States, John Sengstacke emerges as one of the nation’s most powerful African American newspaper publishers. In 1940, at the ripe age of 27, the young Sengstacke gained national notoriety when he became the second publisher of the Chicago Defender, arguably one of the most recognized black newspapers in the country. Founded in 1905 by Sengstacke’s uncle, Robert Sengstacke Abbott, the Chicago Defender quickly emerged as a powerful voice in articulating the widespread oppression that African Americans throughout the nation faced. It also served as a creative outlet for hundreds of African American writers and artists who gathered in Chicago to hone their creative talents during what has come to be known as the Black Chicago Renaissance. From 1932 through 1950, Chicago’s black community witnessed, and participated in, important creative developments in literature, art, music, social science, and journalism that affected not only the literary world but the broader community through its social and political content and commitment. The Chicago Defender was one of a handful of newspapers that provided African Americans in Chicago and elsewhere with a platform to challenge forcefully legal segregation and the mistreatment of African Americans. As a result, Sengstacke became an important figure in the civil rights movement and a shaper of public opinion, including the opinions of those writers whose works exemplified the spirit of the Black Chicago Renaissance.
Long before Sengstacke became publisher of the Chicago Defender, it was clear that he was being groomed for a life in the newspaper industry. Born in Savannah, Georgia, on May 12, 1912, he graduated from Brick Junior College and later attended Hampton Institute, a historically black college in Virginia that was eventually renamed Hampton University. As a child, Sengstacke was solely responsible for soliciting ads and laying out the news pages for the Woodville Times, a weekly newspaper that was founded by his grandfather, John H. H. Sengstacke, and later run by his father, Alexander Sengstacke. It was there that he learned the inner workings of the business, though he admitted frankly back then that he was not “too keen” on the newspaper business. However, he was singled out anyway by his uncle, Robert S. Abbott, who was the publisher of the Chicago Defender, and trained as Abbott’s successor. In fact, Abbott was so personally impressed by Sengstacke’s talent that he financed his nephew’s education at Hampton Institute, where he graduated in 1934. He also subsidized his studies at the Mergenthaler Linotype School, The Chicago School of Printing, Northwestern University, and Ohio State University.
In 1934, Sengstacke became vice president and general manager of The Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company, and when his uncle died in 1940, he inherited the paper and became the company’s second president and publisher. Almost immediately, Sengstacke had to restructure the newspaper’s business operation. Though Abbott had acquired a massive personal fortune as publisher of the paper, the Chicago Defender was nearly bankrupt when Sengstacke took control after Abbott’s death. But over time, Sengstacke eventually nursed it back to profitability and presided over the paper’s circulation boom.
Clearly, Sengstacke had big shoes to fill, and he understood the responsibilities that accompanied running the country’s largest black newspaper. Under his uncle’s leadership, the Chicago Defender had gained a national readership that extended far beyond Chicago. The paper’s decision to become a champion of the Great Black Migration was single-handedly responsible for the influx of thousands of black southerners into Chicago from southern states like Mississippi, North Carolina, and Alabama. Beginning in World War I, Abbott used his newspaper as a platform to encourage southerners to come north. He forcefully argued that the destiny of Black Americans was inextricably linked to the North, where factories were desperate for workers. The Chicago Defender printed the one-way train schedules from cities in the South to Chicago and blacks responded favorably. Some white southerners, however, were not so happy with the tenor and tone of the newspaper, and a number of African Americans report that the Defender had to be read and distributed covertly in parts of the South where its equal rights message and encouragement to migrate north was considered an affront to southern values and economy, as well as a danger to the moral and social fabric of the country as a whole.
In just a few years since taking the helm of the newspaper, John Sengstacke came to realize that his Chicago had also become a destination place for rising African American artists who were looking for an outlet to showcase their talent. As the publisher of the Chicago Defender, Sengstacke presided over and watched the formation of the Black Chicago Renaissance, an exciting literary and cultural period for African American writers and artists who were deeply committed to the development of the arts among African Americans. Thousands of black writers would congregate in Chicago to celebrate Black artistic expression. This phenomenon had of course been successful in Harlem many years before, and Sengstacke and others were confident that Chicago, with its burgeoning Black population and a spirit of cooperation among black and white progressive or radical artists in the city, could experience a similar cultural awakening. For young writers who were looking to begin journalism careers, Sengstacke was the person to see. He offered African Americans an opportunity to write their first bylined story and provided a space for freelance photographers to showcase their photos. In 1943, Langston Hughes, who had been involved with the cultural outpouring in Harlem, introduced his famous character, Jess Semple, in his Chicago Defender column. “Simple,” as he was called, became a beloved figure whose social and political ideas helped expose issues of race and gender to a popular audience made far more possible by the distribution it garnered in Sengstacke’s newspaper. Several volumes of Simple stories followed the popularity of the articles in the Defender, and helped Hughes to continue concentrating on being a professional writer as opposed to taking on other jobs to supplement his writing income. Gwendolyn Brooks, whose work represented an early poetic flowering of the Chicago Renaissance, signified by the popular acclaim for her first poetry volume and the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize to her second, first published her poetry in the Chicago Defender from 1934 to 1936. Others such as Richard Wright and Frank Marshall Davis also found an atmosphere in Chicago that was congenial to writers within the pages of the newspaper. For example, the Chicago Defender committed itself to writing about rising African American artists. When mainstream newspapers ignored writers like Lorraine Hansberry, whose A Raisin in the Sun would win the 1959 New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Sengstacke allowed his newspaper to publish feature stories on writers like Hansberry and others.
In terms of Black journalism, Chicago, in the period of the Renaissance, was the epicenter of the Black Press. In addition to Sengstacke’s centrally important Chicago Defender, Chicagoans could also read the Chicago edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Bee, the Chicago Whip, and several smaller community papers. All of these papers printed articles from the national Black wire service, which was also based in Chicago. Magazines were also flourishing in Chicago, largely because of the success of publisher John Harold Johnson. Johnson mortgaged his mother’s furniture for a meager $500 so he could pay for his first direct mail advertising about his magazine, Negro Digest, which he launched in 1942. He would go on to launch Jet and Ebony magazines a few years later. During this period, Chicago’s black population had soared from 44,000 in 1910 to more than 230,000 by 1930. The tightly knit community of nineteenth-century African Americans was mostly literate and could read the daily publications. It was this group that threw their support behind the various black newspapers and ensured that they survived.
It is important to note that not only did Sengstacke control one of the nation’s most powerful black newspapers, his influence was far reaching. He was also the founder of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a collaborative of dozens of black newspapers that routinely met to show their strength as a collective power in the publishing industry and that had sought to restrict entrance to African Americans. Sengstacke founded the NNPA in 1940 and served seven terms as the group’s president. He later witnessed the organization change its name from the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association to the National Newspaper Publishers Association. The NNPA was created to counter the resistance that black newspapers faced from white mainstream newspapers who did not see African American publications as serious enough to serve as conveyors of the news. But the organization, though still in existence today, never really got off the ground, in part because small, family-owned black newspapers resisted the idea of being represented under the umbrella of Sengstacke’s enterprise, and many rejected the idea of collaborating with other black newspapers that were viewed primarily as competition. For years, they feuded with each other over everything from advertising dollars to circulation numbers. Despite the tensions, Sengstacke kept the organization together, pointing out that the Black Press, because of its continual attacks on racism, would be the subject of harsh criticisms.
In the realm of politics, Sengstacke demonstrated that he had a keen understanding of the issues that confronted the nation, and he wielded a substantial amount of political clout. Sengstacke inherited the paper from Abbott, who became a millionaire, in large part because of the success of the Chicago Defender. Like his uncle, Sengstacke was never shy about being an activist. In fact, he used his position as publisher of the largest circulated black newspaper to push for causes that affected African Americans. He worked with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to jumpstart jobs in the U.S. Postal Service for African Americans and eventually persuaded Roosevelt to include an African American reporter in a White House news conference for the first time in the country’s history. More importantly, however, it was Sengstacke’s insistence that the armed services during World War II be fully integrated, and he aggressively pressured the Roosevelt administration to change the policies. Like other African American publishers, Sengstacke gained access to Roosevelt through his connection with his wife—Eleanor Roosevelt, who was largely seen as a champion of Negro Rights. Mrs. Roosevelt was seen as a friend to African American leaders, because she had a long track record of advocating civil rights and often supported causes that were not embraced by her husband’s administration. In fact, many whites were outraged with Mrs. Roosevelt when in 1943 she penned a column for another publication, Negro Digest, called “If I Was a Negro.” In the column, Roosevelt challenged the mistreatment that African Americans faced.
Though President Roosevelt resisted listening to Sengstacke’s advice, his successor, President Harry Truman named Sengstacke to the commission that he formed to desegregate the military. And in 1956, Sengstacke made a bold move by transforming his popular weekly newspaper into a daily, making it the nation’s largest black-owned daily at the time. That year, Sengstacke also purchased the Pittsburgh Courier, a newspaper that was at one time owned by Robert Vann. During World War II, Vann’s newspaper came under scrutiny after it launched the “Double V” campaign in its pages. The “Double V” campaign called for victory against fascism in Nazi Germany during World War II as well as against racism in the United States. During that period, the Black Press was severely under attack by J. Edgar Hoover, who complained that black newspapers were engaged in acts of sedition aimed at weakening the nation’s morale during the time of war. Hoover threatened to put the African American press out of business and had urged Francis Biddle, then U.S. Attorney General, to launch an investigation. Sengstacke, in his capacity as head of the NNPA, traveled to Washington, D.C., and convinced Biddle and other government officials to back down. In an attempt to further solidify his economic base, Sengstacke purchased the Tri-State Defender in Memphis and the Michigan Chronicle in Detroit and formed a newspaper chain called Sengstacke Enterprises Inc.
During his tenure, Sengstacke was most responsible for recruiting some of the best talents to the newspaper. Most noticeably, he hired Ethel Payne, a feisty African American journalist with little experience to work for the Chicago Defender. Payne would later garner a national name for herself by aggressively covering civil rights issues. She would become one of the few black journalists covering national politics in Washington, D.C., in the 1950s. For example, her work in the Black Press was so lauded that she was affectionately called “The First Lady of the Black Press.” Payne was the paper’s White House correspondent, a job that she secured in large part because of the pressure that Sengstacke placed on the White House to grant press credentials to a reporter representing the Black Press. She also traveled with U.S. presidents overseas, something that was unparalleled in the Black Press. But like Sengstacke, Ethel Payne used journalism primarily as a vehicle for her own social activism. In the pages of the Chicago Defender, she tried to train a national spotlight on issues relevant to African Americans, and her column was eventually syndicated in other black newspapers across the country. In 1954, she received national attention when, at a press conference, she asked President Eisenhower when he planned to ban segregation in interstate travel. Visibly irritated, Eisenhower said he refused to support any special interest, and never recognized her at future press briefings. Others said her question helped move civil rights onto the national agenda. That afternoon, the Washington Evening Star carried a center box on page one with the caption “Negro Reporter Angers Ike.” Sengstacke, who was based in Chicago, called Payne after hearing of the confrontation. “So you’re picking on presidents now,” he said.1
It is important to note that Sengstacke’s contributions were not just limited to the publishing industry. His efforts at integrating public spaces in the 1940s, for example, helped to lead to the hiring of Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 became the first black player in major league baseball. Though he was encouraged to run for public office by some who felt that he could use his influence to shape public policy, Sengstacke maintained his position behind the scenes and insisted that he neither yearned for the responsibility or the fame of elected office.
Thomas Picou, a nephew of Sengstacke’s who purchased the Chicago Defender and Sengstacke’s other newspapers in 2003 said that his uncle was responsible for helping to elect Mayor Richard J. Daley and was chiefly responsible for the integration of the school board and fire and police departments.
But in 1983, Sengstacke would develop a contentious relationship with Chicago’s first black mayor—Harold Washington. Sengstacke, who was friends with the Daley family—Chicago’s political machine—was accused of inadequately covering Washington’s tenure in office. Many in the African American community were troubled, particularly since the Chicago Defender was a black-owned newspaper. Some African Americans canceled their subscriptions and abandoned the newspaper. Washington felt ignored by the Black daily and was personally hurt by the decision of Sengstacke to endorse his white opponent, Richard Daley, in the Democratic primary. In fact, officials in Washington’s administration would often slip scoops to the Chicago Defender, in hopes that they would pursue a particular story, often to no avail. Meanwhile, his opposition worked overtime feeding reporters dirt on Washington—with great success. Editorials and news stories routinely attacked Washington, though his popularity in Chicago’s African American community soared.
Four years before his death, John Sengstacke stepped down as publisher and turned the reins over to his brother, Frederick Sengstacke. He served as publisher until 2000, when Colonel Eugene Scott, U.S. Army (ret.), assumed the role. John Sengstacke died of a heart attack on May 28, 1999, at the age of 84, after a prolonged illness. He was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal posthumously by President Bill Clinton in 2000, and the enterprise called the Chicago Defender that he developed continues to be the largest African American chain of newspapers operating in the country.
Before his death in 2005, John H. Johnson, the publisher of Ebony and Jet and one of Sengstacke’s contemporaries, said that he was inspired by the journalism that the Chicago Defender represented and tried on many occasions to replicate some of the same ideas into his African American magazines. “My mother and I became aware of the opportunities in Chicago for Black people by reading the Defender,” said Johnson, who headquartered his publications in Chicago as well. “Sengstacke took a great newspaper and made it better,” he added.2
Sengstacke was philanthropic as well, having served as chairman of the board of Provident Hospital and Training School Association, where he built a new $50 million Provident Medical Center to enable the hospital, in which the world’s first heart operation was performed, to continue its life-saving service to Blacks and others on Chicago’s South Side.
1. Interview with Ethel L. Payne by Kathleen Currie, Women in Journalism oral history project of the Washington Press Club Foundation, August 25, 1987 through November 17, 1987, Oral History Collection, Columbia University, 49–50.
2. John H. Johnson, interview with author, Chicago, July 17, 2004.
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