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[ 5 ] Robert Abbott Finds a Racial Paradise As a Negro and a product of North American traditions, my natural, logical reaction was the desire to reach some clear, positive conclusions as to the real depth and extent of the Brazilian democratic spirit or to what degree it was truly inclusive of the Negro. And this, I feel I have done. —robert abbot This was Robert Sengstacke Abbott’s explanation for why he had traveled to South America in 1923 to gather news.1 He began his journey with an agenda, a hypothesis he was intent on proving even if the facts did not support it. His theory was that other countries treated people of color with respect and dignity; therefore, they lived a much better life than their brethren in America . Abbott knew he had the power to influence an enormous black audience through his weekly newspaper the Chicago Defender, and he was keenly aware of its white readership. He knew that some white readers had empathy for suffering blacks, but he also knew that his message of equality and progress angered some racist white southerners. Thus he went abroad to collect information that he hoped would help mold public opinion and ultimately change societal dynamics for blacks in America. When Abbott began his newspaper, his office was the kitchen of the rooming house where he lived on State Street in Chicago. He was the entire staff, serving as reporter, editor, and peddler of his weekly.2 “American Race Prejudice Must Be Destroyed” was the first of nine points in the Defender’s platform , and it left no doubt that the newspaper was going to champion black rights against an unjust society. Abbott had developed his worldview long before he began the newspaper in 1905. According to his biographer Roi Ottley (who later became a Defender executive and a foreign correspondent), Abbott’s half-white stepfather, Rev. John H. Sengstacke, had instilled in the boy a belief that the black race needed a “public defender” and that a newspaper was one of the strongest weapons 64 african american foreign correspondents an African American could have to defend his race. Abbott, whose father died when he was two, so admired his stepfather that he took Sengstacke as his middle name. Abbott loved his country, but he held it accountable for its consignment of blacks to a marginal status.3 He created the newspaper, he wrote, “to give encouragement to [the black person’s] ambitions, voice his longings and clothe him in dignity.” Abbott’s nephew John H. Sengstacke, who succeeded him as editor and publisher of the Defender, wrote on the newspaper’s fiftieth anniversary in 1955, “It has emphasized his obligations as a citizen, and supported his faith in America.”4 Sengstacke was continuing the work his uncle had started: “recording and interpreting one of the most amazing phenomena of our time; the political and economic coming of age of the Negro in America.”5 Abbott used his business acumen to capitalize on trends and create an influential publication. He even tapped into yellow journalism, diligently studying and imitating successful white newspapers that fed readers a steady diet of sensationalized news. To that mix he added news of his race and strident criticism of the status quo. Metz Lochard, a longtime editor at the Defender , believed the newspaper was successful because it glamorized African American personalities and ran series on the “Negro problem” and columns by prominent blacks.6 The weekly was the first black newspaper to run a health column and full-page comic strips. The entrepreneurial publisher outwitted the dominant power system in the South that banned circulation of his paper; he hired national representatives to generate circulation, solicit advertising, and gather news. He enlisted Pullman porters to throw copies of the newspaper from trains. Poor African American field workers were among the tens of thousands who either read or had the Chicago Defender read to them. They believed its contention that life was better in the North, and they headed to cities the newspaper wrote about. According to Sengstacke, his uncle crystallized black “aspirations as complete integration into American life” and aroused blacks “to individual achievement and fuller participation in the affairs of our country.”7 Scholars confirm that the Defender was largely responsible for the Great Migration of perhaps a million blacks; it also assisted them when they arrived in places as foreign to them as another country, helping them find housing...

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