Chicago Defender, the most influential African American newspaper during the early and mid-20th century. The Defender, published in Chicago with a national editorial perspective, played a leading role in the widespread Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North. Founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott, the Chicago Defender originally was a four-page weekly newspaper. Like the white-owned Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers, the Defender under Abbott used sensationalism to boost circulation. Editorials attacking white oppression and the lynching of African Americans helped increase the paper’s circulation in Southern states. During World War I the Defender urged equal
CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 1916 On a frigid and windblown day, a small item appeared in a Chicago newspaper. Several hundred black families had quietly left Selma, Alabama, heading north. Their treatment in…