The Chicago Defender In Images Of America
Isabel Wilkerson's 2011 book, "The Warmth of Other Suns" brought to life for many readers the epic migration of African Americans from the South to other regions of the United States beginning during WW I. One of the most influential voices in encouraging the Migration was an African American Newspaper, the Chicago Defender. A new photographic history, "Chicago Defender" (2012) by Myiti Stengstake Rice offers an overview of the paper and its influence. Rice, a descendant of the family which owned the paper for most of its life, is a professor of African American Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. The book is part of the Images of America Series of Arcadia Press, which specializes in photographic histories of local American life.
In her Introduction, Rice emphasizes the role of the Chicago Defender in the Great Migration with its emphasis on the poverty, lynchings, and discrimination in the region and the possibility of a better life elsewhere. The paper declared May 15, 1917, as the date of the "Great Northern Drive" with a call for African Americans to head north. The paper described the South as "the land where every foot of land marks a tragedy. Every black man for the sake of his wife and daughter 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."
The history of the book focuses largely on the early years of the Chicago Defender from 1905 -- 1940 under the leadership of Robert Sengstake Abbott (1868 -- 1940).Educated as a lawyer, Abbott founded the paper in 1905 and ran it himself for five years. The paper struggled as a handbill and could not find distributors. When Abbott began his crusade for migration, many Southern States attempted to suppress the paper and it was carried to local communities by railroad porters and by entertainers. By 1915, the paper had a staff and a growing readership. Abbott soon became one of two early Twentieth Century African American millionaires, (together with Madam C.J. Walker). The first half of the book includes many photographs of Abbott's early years in the South and of the paper and its growing influence.
With Abbott's death in 1940, his nephew and hand-picked successor, John Stengstake, took over the paper. The book shows how The Defender's influence continued to grow under Stengtstake's leadership. For example, the paper's columnists in the 1940's included, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Mary MacLeod Bethune, one of the most formidable groups of writers that could be assembled for any paper. Stengstake and the Defender were driving forces in securing two Executive Orders from President Truman in 1948. The first Order provided for the desegregation of the military while the second created the Fair Employment Practices Commission, the predecessor of the modern-day EEOC. Stengstake expanded the scope and circulation of the paper dramatically and created a powerful umbrella organization for the African American press.
A short chapter of the book documents the role of Stengstake's wife Myrtle in the Chicago Defender and in Chicago's Civic life. A chapter focuses on the Bud Billiken (a fictitious cartoon character) Parade which the Defender began in August, 1929, and which has become a fixture of Chicago's African American life. A final chapter of the book offers examples of the extensive documentary photography of the African American community by Stegstake's son Bobby over a period of 50 years. The book closes with the paper's headlines when Barack Obama received his party's nomination for president. Obama had been a columnist for the Chicago Defender for several years.
The book offers a good overview through its photographs and text of the Chicago Defender and of African American communities in Chicago and in the South. The focus was somewhat topheavy on the Abbott and Stengstake families and on their personal lives. The pages of the Chicago Defender constitute a priceless resource for readers wishing to understand the African American experience. The book could have used more of an emphasis on the paper and its contents.
This Images of America book meets the mission of the series in covering local American places and institutions. It shows how an initially small local newspaper came to assume a historically important role in American life.
