End of the Chicago Defender

Setting type at the Chicago Defender, 1941.

Resistance to injustice, bearing witness to the suffering of the innocent,  never  lacking sympathy for the poor — these have always been among the  sacred duties of the press, and no newspaper has  performed  with more courage and intelligence than the Chicago Defender.

The announcement that the news organization will stop printing its 114-year old print edition, and switch to online-only publication, is not unusual in the news business these days, but it does mark the passing of an era and a moment for reflection on the status of the African American press.

When over 100 African Americans were killed and thousands of homes burned during in the East St. Louis riots in July, 1917,  only the African American press, especially the Chicago Defender, covered the eyewitness accounts of brutality by white mobs.  The same is true of many other major riots and incidents.

When millions of African Americans experienced lynchings, disappearances and murders in broad daylight in the American South, the Chicago Defender and other African American newspapers demanded federal intervention,  After the Woodrow Wilson administration refused to act, the Chicago Defender campaigned for  blacks to  move north, away from their old slave masters.  Nearly half of the African American population did move north, in what became known as the “Great Migration.”

The literature of resistance has been a major contribution of the Defender.  For instance, here’s a Defender editorial about the Scopes Trial in 1925:

In Tennessee a school teacher is being tried for teaching evolution to his pupils. If convicted, a prison term awaits him; he will be branded as an ordinary felon and thrown into a cell with robbers, gunmen, thugs, rapists and murderers. he will wear a striped suit, learn the lock-step and spend a few years reducing rocks to a more serviceable size.  That is the South’s way. Anything which conflicts with the South’s idea of her own importance, anything which tends to break down her doctrine of white superiority, she fights. If truths are introduced and these truths do not conform to what southern grandfathers believed, then it must be suppressed. (“If Monkeys Could Speak.” May 23, 1925.) .

Or for instance:  “Ghastly deeds of race rioters told,” 1919

Monday morning found the thoroughfares in the white neighborhoods throated with a sea of humans—everywhere—some armed with guns, bricks, clubs and an oath. The presence of a black face in their vicinity was a signal for a carnival of death, and before any aid could reach the poor, unfortunate one his body reposed in some kindly gutter, his brains spilled over a dirty pavement. Some of the victims were chased, caught and dragged into alleys and lots, where they were left for dead. In all parts of the city, white mobs dragged from surface cars, black passengers wholly ignorant of any trouble, and set upon them.

An unidentified man, young woman and a 3 month old baby were found dead on the street at the intersection of 47th street and Wentworth avenue. She had attempted to board a car there when the mob seized her, beat her, slashed her body into ribbons and beat the Baby’s brains out against a telegraph pole. Not satisfied with this, one rioter severed her breasts and a white youngster bore it aloft on pole, triumphantly, while the crowd hooted gleefully. All the time this was happening, several policemen were in the crowd, but did not make any attempt to make rescue …

Writing by Ida B. Wells,  Langston Hughes,  Ethel Payne, Gwendolyn Brooks and Willard Motley  was also a part of the Defender’s history.

Also see:

Bound for the Promised Land, The Atlantic, 2016 .

Legendary Black Newspaper Prints Last Copy, New York Times, July 9, 2019 .