4742 S Martin Luther King Dr
Chicago, IL 60615, USA

Robert S. Abbott House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

In the opening decades of this century, Robert Sengstacke Abbott created and led the Chicago Defender to a position of national importance in the lives of black people, North and South. Under Abbott the Defender was a beacon of hope for tens-of-thousands of blacks pushed beyond endurance by the virulent racism of the Deep South. According to the great sociologist, E. Frankl in Frazier, "The Defender more than any other Negro newspaper was responsible for stimulating the northward migration of Negroes by picturing the advantages of the North as opposed to southern oppression. In articles and editorials, Abbott encouraged southern blacks to seek a haven in the northern cities, particularly Chicago.

For the first time in the history of the black press, the masses came to feel that the Defender indeed was their newspaper, printed with them in mind. The headlines of the Defender were designed to attract the eyes, touch the hearts and move the pocketbooks of the black masses.

BIOGRAPHY:
Robert Sengstacke Abbott was born in 1870 on St. Simon Island, off the coast of Georgia. He was educated at Beach Institute in Savannah, Clafin University in South Carolina, and Hampton Institute in Virginia where he learned the printer’s trade. In 1896 he migrated to Chicago where he studied law at Kent School of Law but was unable to earn a Iiving as a lawyer. Abbott conceived of the idea of a newspaper while working in a printing house in the City of Chicago. The first page handbill-size copies of the Defender were peddled from door-to-door by its optimistic founder in 1905. Virtually every barbershop, beauty parlor, drugstore, church and poolroom became an outlet for this brash newspaper. From these lowly origins, the Defender expanded to become a household name in black America. Robert S. Abbott soon moved in very high financial and business circles in Chicago. The Defender became a business showplace. Abbott himself was soon quite well-to-do within two decades.

Unlike the circumspectly prime North Star edited by Frederick Douglass, or the New York Age edited by T. Thomas Fortune, the Defender under Abbott deliberately published the shocking, the scandalous and the unflattering. This approach, said a leading student of the history of black Chicago, "was destined to revolutionize Negro journalism.

When the migration of southern blacks peaked, the Defender turned its attention to the social and political status of blacks in the North. Abbott lashed out against racism and discrimination in Chicago. The Defender reported outrages against blacks in other parts of the country. Abbott was committed to making the public life of the nation color-blind. He once wrote, "I want to think and do think I am a citizen of the United States and the flag that covers the head of the white man is the flag that covers and protects the head of the Negro ... 3 From time-to-time the Defender reported on manifestations of racism abroad, including a widely read series involving the travels of Abbott himself. The main thrust of the Defender, however, was on the home front. This newspaper was the twentieth century pioneer in the publication of articles dealing with black personal deportment and conduct, but it also occasionally issued calls for cultural up life and social refinement. However, the overall miss ion of the Defender was, and stiII is, the defense of the race against racism. Then, as now, the pages of the Defender tended "to set the tone and provide the rhetoric of public discussion of issues.”

As a business entrepreneur, Abbott became the most successful black publisher of his era. From a one-man kitchen table operation in 1905, the Defender evolved into a three-story building with its own printing press, a production staff of three-score employees and a circulation of over a quarter million copies weekly by 1929. The readership of the Defender was primarily beyond the city of Chicago, with the local black population taking up only about 40,000 of the newspapers sold. Accordingly, the Defender had both a local and a national focus.

At the beginning of the Depression, Abbott "was drawing $2,000 as a weekly salary," plus regular bonuses. He had nearly a half million dollars in cash. He lived in a palatial home at 4742 South Parkway Avenue (now Martin Luther King Drive), an extant edifice which he purchased for the then huge sum of $24,000 on June 28, 1926. While undergoing marital difficulties in 1934, Mr. Abbott sold this residence to the Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company on the 24th day of January of that year. Thus, this building became a part of the legal structure of the Defender itself, remaining in the general estate until I 1944.

Perhaps more durable than the old Abbott residence is the Defender itself which currently has a Chicago circulation of 31,384 but is the senior partner in a chain of newspapers that includes the Michigan Chronicle (circulation 47,843), the New Pittsburg Courier (circulation 35, 376), and the New National Courier with Georgia, Florida, Ohio and Michigan (Detroit) editions, and the Tri-State Defender. Known as the Sengstacke Newspapers, the elongated branches of the old Chicago Defender boast a full-time staff of over 200 persons.

Robert S. Abbott died February 29, 1940, but not until after having groomed his nephew, the current captain of this team of newspapers, John H. Sengstacke, for the leading role. In the words of Gunner Myrdal, author of the monumental work An American Dilemma, Abbott was:

The greatest single force in Negro journalism, and indeed the founder of the modem Negro press. The publisher's newspaper contemporaries as well have acknowledged his significant role in the development of Negro newspapers.

Robert S Abbott House, 4742 Martin Luther King Dr, Chicago, Cook County, IL

HABS IL-1092