| 4th | Top newspapers in Illinois |
 The January 5, 2007 front page of the Chicago Defender |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner | Real Times Inc. |
| Publisher | Hiram Jackson |
| Founded | May 5, 1905 |
| Headquarters | Chicago |
| Circulation | 10,000 (unaudited) |
| Official website | www.chicagodefender.com |
The Chicago Defender was the United States’ largest and most influential black weekly newspaper by the beginning of World War I.[1] The Defender was founded on May 5, 1905 by Robert S. Abbott[2] with an investment of 25 cents and a press run of 300 copies. The first issues, which were created on the kitchen table of his landlord’s apartment, were four-page, six-column handbills and filled with news gathered by Abbott, as well as clippings from other, more established newspapers.
As a northern paper, the Defender had more freedom to denounce issues outright, and its editorial position was very militant, attacking racial inequities head-on. Sensationalistic headlines, graphic images, and red ink were utilized to capture the reader's attention and convey the horrors of lynchings, rapes, assaults and other atrocities affecting black Americans. The Defender did not use the words "Negro" or "black" in its pages. Instead, African Americans were referred to as "the Race" and black men and women as "Race men" and "Race women".
In 1910, Abbott was in a position to hire a full time employee, J. Hockley Smiley. Around this time, the Defender began to attain a national reputation. Using the yellow journalism techniques from other papers, the Defender began to attack racial injustice. The paper’s circulation was helped by Pullman porters and entertainers distributed the newspaper south of the Mason-Dixon line.[1] By 1919, more than two-thirds of the paper’s readership was outside Chicago. It was the first black paper with a circulation over 100,000 and it is believed that as many as half a million people read the newspaper each week. The Defender was also the first black newspaper to have a health column, and the first to have a full page of comic strips.
In the late teens, the Defender campaigned for blacks to migrate from the South to the North and was highly successful, tripling the black population in Chicago and other major cities in the North and Northwest.[2] In just three years from 1919–1922[1] the Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.
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, Abbott and editor Lucius Harper created the Bud Billiken Club and later organized parades to promote healthy activity among black children in Chicago. In 1929 the organization began the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic, which is still held annually in Chicago in early August. In the 1950s under Sengstacke's direction, the Bud Billiken Parade expanded and emerged as the largest single event in Chicago. Today, it attracts more than one million attendance with more than 25 million television viewers making it one of the largest parades in the country.[3]
Abbott's nephew, John H. Sengstacke, took over the paper in 1940. In 1948, he encouraged President Harry S. Truman to integrate the Armed Service, which he did soon after. Sengstacke served as a member of Truman's appointed committee to assure the military had implemented a plan to fully integrate the military.
Sengstacke also brought together for the first time major black newspaper publishers and created the National Negro Publisher's Association, later renamed the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). Today the NNPA consists of over 200 black newspaper members. Two days following the publishers' first meeting in Chicago, Abbott died.
One of Sengstacke's most striking accomplishments occurred on February 6, 1956, when the Defender became a daily paper and changed its name to the Chicago Daily Defender, the nation's first black daily newspaper.
Control of the Chicago Defender and her sister publications was transferred to a new ownership group named Real Times Inc. in January 2003. Real Times, Inc. was organized and led by Picou, and Robert (Bobby), John H. Sengstacke's surviving child and father of the beneficiaries of the Sengstacke Trust. In effect, Picou, then Chairman and CEO of Real Times, Inc., led what was then labeled a "Sengstacke family led" deal to facilitate trust beneficiaries and other Sengstacke family shareholders to agree to the sale of the company. Picou recruited Sam Logan, former publisher of the Michigan Chronicle, who then recruited O'Neil Swanson, Bill Pickard, Ron Hall and Gordon Follmer, black businessman from Detroit, Michigan (the "Detroit Group") as investors in Real Times. Chicago investors included Picou, Bobby Sengstacke, David M. Milliner (who served as publisher of the Chicago Defender from 2003-2004), Kurt Cherry and James Carr.
   | PBS: Chicago Defender - The Chicago Defender |
| | "Chicago Defender photo exhibit looks back to the future" - Chicago Defender exhibit, announcement look back to the future | WindyCitizen.com |
| | Bud Billiken Day Parade - Bud Billiken Day Parade |
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