📜 From Handbill to Powerhouse: How the Chicago Defender Shaped the Great Migration and Redefined Black Journalism

Founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, the Chicago Defender became a national force against racial injustice — and a driving engine behind one of the largest internal migrations in U.S. history.

In the spring of 1905, in a cramped Chicago boardinghouse, Robert Sengstacke Abbott printed 300 copies of a modest four-page paper. He sold subscriptions himself, knocking on doors across the city. What began as a weekly handbill would become one of the most influential newspapers in American history: the Chicago Defender.

More than a publication, the Defender was a movement.

From its first issue, Abbott positioned the paper as a blunt instrument against racial injustice. Beneath its masthead ran an uncompromising declaration: “American Race Justice Must Be Destroyed.” At a time when mainstream newspapers often ignored or minimized violence against Black Americans, the Defender reported boldly on lynchings, sexual violence, economic exploitation, and voter suppression.

By 1915, the once-small weekly had grown to 16,000 in circulation. But its real impact extended far beyond Chicago.

A Catalyst for the Great Migration

Historians widely credit the Defender as a major catalyst behind the Great Migration, the historic movement of more than half a million African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities between 1915 and 1920.

Abbott understood the power of information. He used Black Pullman porters and entertainers to carry the paper across the Mason-Dixon Line, often smuggling bundles into Southern communities where racial terror and segregation defined daily life.