Abbott, Robert Sengstacke (1870–1940)
Editor and founder of the CHICAGODEFENDER,
the influential newspaper that encouraged Afri-
can Americans in the South to migrate north for
better living conditions and economic possibili-
ties. Abbott, whose parents were former slaves,
studied printing at Hampton Institute. He used
the earnings from his printing business to fund
his law school education at the Kent College of
Law in CHICAGOand graduated in 1900. Five
years later he began publishing the Chicago De-
fender, a weekly publication that Pullman
porters disseminated regularly throughout the
South despite the outrage of white southerners
who were determined to prevent a mass exodus
of underpaid, disenfranchised African-American
workers.
Historians estimate that during its heyday in
the 1920s the newspaper reached some 250,
readers nationwide, many of them working-class
African Americans. Abbott published a number of
contemporary writers, including LANGSTON
HUGHESand Gwendolyn Brooks. In 1929 Abbott
founded ABBOTT’S MONTHLY, a magazine that
published works by a number of Harlem Renais-
sance writers. The periodical lasted for four years
but succumbed eventually to the economic up-
heaval of the Great Depression.

Bibliography
DeSantis, Alan D. “A Forgotten Leader: Robert S. Ab-
bott and the Chicago Defender from 1910–1920.”
Journalism History23, no. 2 (1997): 63–71.

Jordan, William G. Black Newspapers and America’s War

for Democracy. Chapel Hill: The University of

North Carolina Press, 2001.

Ottley, Roi. The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of

Robert S. Abbott.Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1955.

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Robert S. Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender

(Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare

Book and Manuscript Library)