The Chicago Defender: The Newspaper That Moved a Nation

Founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott — the son of formerly enslaved parents — the Chicago Defender became the most widely read Black newspaper in America, and one of the most politically consequential publications in the country's history. The paper was distributed secretly throughout the Jim Crow South by Pullman porters and mail carriers, passed from hand to hand in barbershops and churches. Its "Great Northern Drive" campaign of 1917 directly accelerated the Great Migration by urging Black Southerners to move north, printing classified ads for Chicago jobs alongside reports of lynchings and racial violence that could mean death to possess in certain Southern counties. Some Southern states attempted to ban the paper. Between 1910 and 1930, Chicago's Black population grew from roughly 44,000 to about 234,000, with the Defender a central organizer of that movement. The paper also championed desegregation of the US military. Abbott became one of the first African American self-made millionaires. The Defender was headquartered at 3435 S Indiana Avenue in Bronzeville from 1920 to 1960; the building still stands and is a Chicago Landmark.