The Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender was one of most widely read and influential newspapers in the African American community in the early twentieth century. It was founded by Robert S. Abbott in 1905, and by World War I it was read by African Americans throughout the nation. The newspaper became a champion of African American equality, highlighting racial injustice and calling for equal rights.
A few images have been provided here to give you a small taste of what Defender subscribers would have seen.
Racial Justice
The Defender provided extensive coverage of lynchings, keeping the issue in the forefront of the minds of African Americans. In fact, the Defender was one of the two best contemporary sources for chronicling lynchings (the other from NAACP files), and historians still refer to it as a principal source for early twentieth-century African American history.
This headline from May 20, 1916, provides shocking details about a spectacle lynching, which merited the week's main headline.
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The Defender went beyond simply reporting about lynchings -- it called upon African Americans, and white Americans as well, to take proactive measures to end the gruesome practice. The newspaper supported candidates who opposed lynching, and was a major proponent of anti-lynching legislation. Despite its efforts, the Senate repeatedly failed to pass a federal anti-lynching measure throughout this period. This cartoon (Nov. 4, 1916) encourages blacks to "remember this scene" when they went to the ballot box, and to choose candidates that would counter the strength of southern legislators who stonewalled anti-lynching measures and in so doing gave tacit support to the practice. |
| Migration Another key role played by the Chicago Defender and other black newspapers was to encourage immigration from the rural South to the urban North. The following cartoon (Aug. 19, 1916), called "The Awakening," showed how after fifty years of continuing oppression following emancipation, blacks in the South were finally liberating themselves from white landlords and creditors by immigrating to northern cities, where jobs and education awaited them. The black press often painted an overly rosy picture of the North, but many migrants did in fact find conditions better and chose to stay. |
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As African Americans left the South in great numbers, particularly in the mid-to-late 1910s, southern communities took drastic measures to keep them from leaving -- not from any particular care for the welfare of the African Americans, but rather out of concern about their dwindling labor force. The following article, "Still Leaving South" (Sept. 9, 1916), reports how the leaders of Montgomery, Alabama, passed a law making it a misdemeanor to even ask someone to "leave to work to any other town or city." Statutes like this were common methods of trying to keep northern labor agents out of southern communities, and came on the heels of "thousands of our people who are leaving this town each week for the northern mines and fields of labor." As the article reports, "Despite the new law, hundreds left for Pennsylvania yesterday," showing that the migration continued with or without specific encouragement from outside agents. |
Sports and EntertainmentNot all coverage in the Defender was as serious as reports on lynching or migration. The black press was also full of news about society, fashion, entertainment, and sports. The major difference from white papers was that the black press highlighted events and people from within the African American community, seeing this as part of their mission to build race pride and uplift the race by lauding its accomplishments. Here are two pictures of top African American baseball teams from the 1916 season. (Sept. 30 and Oct. 28, 1916) |
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