Chicago Defender became one of the largest and most influential African American newspapers in the 1900’s. It is based in Chicago, Illinois, and owned by Real Times Inc.
Columnists at the Chicago Defender have included the civil rights leader Walter White and the poet and author Langston Hughes. The paper also published early works by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Chicago Defender was founded as a weekly newspaper in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, an African American journalist. Abbott’s editorials demanded full equality for Black people. During the early 1900’s, the newspaper encouraged African Americans to move from the Deep South to the industrial states of the North. It posted job listings and train schedules to help make relocation easier. From 1910 to 1930, about 1 million Black Southerners moved to the North (see Great Migration).
After World War I (1914-1918), the Defender covered such controversial events as the Red Summer Riots of 1919, a series of race riots in cities across the United States. It also campaigned for antilynching legislation and for integrated sports. In 1923, the Chicago Defender introduced the “Bud Billiken Page,” the first newspaper section for children. Bud Billiken was a fictitious character created by Abbott and the managing editor of the Defender, Lucius Harper.
Abbott died in 1940. That year, John H. H. Sengstacke, Abbott’s nephew and heir, assumed editorial control of the paper. In the early 1940’s, the Defender spoke out against segregation of the armed forces. During the civil rights era that began in the 1950’s, the paper actively challenged segregation in the South. In 1956, the Chicago Defender began publishing daily. Sengstacke built the largest chain of Black newspapers in the United States around the Defender. Control of the Chicago Defender and its related publications was transferred to Real Times Inc. in 2003.
The Defender changed from a daily to a weekly newspaper in 2008. In 2019, the Defender ceased print operations and became an online-only newspaper.
