Also American

Person · 1870–1940

Robert Sengstacke Abbott

The publisher whose Chicago Defender helped spark the Great Migration.

A titan of [[black-business]] and the Black press.

Robert Abbott founded the Chicago Defender in 1905 and built it into the most influential Black newspaper in the country, campaigning against lynching and urging Southern Black readers to come north — fueling the Great Migration.

On the timeline

  1. May 5, 1905
    Robert Abbott founds the Chicago Defender

    Launches the paper that becomes the most influential Black weekly and a fuel of the Great Migration.

Resources

The web

Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.

  • responded to·Thread
    Greed — The Root

    Abbott's Defender urged Black Southerners north, helping spark the Great Migration away from sharecropping and terror.