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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 26, 2016)
------- Street Roots • Feb. 26-March 3, 2016 News DEFENDER, fro m page 4 voice of conscience in the country today. small farmers in the South and all over the United States were paying a dollar a year to a newspaper in Chicago, were handing it over to a Pullman porter, that involves a lot of trust, and Robert Abbott took that relationship very seriously. The porters were essential to that whole relationship and that whole process of making the newspaper, as I said, a national communications vehicle for African- Americans. A.G.: What aspects of The Defender captivated you so much that you were willing to spend all these years working on a book about it? E.M.: Honestly, for me, I was re-educated at The Defender. I didn’t know anything about Black America or race relations in the United States, or Chicago for that matter. And I learned all of that there. It made me feel differently about the country and differently about American A.G.: And then when it history and differently about my was nationally known, The responsibility to both of those. Defender not only refrained When the opportunity came to the narrative of a lot of things C O U R T E S Y O F JA S O N R EB L A N D O do a book about it, I seized on going on in the United States that because this was a way to but also actually directed "When the op» walk a reader through the readers on what to do, like entire history of the newspaper. portnnlty came to encouraging people to move It was a way to give them the do a book about North. experience that I had of it, I seized on that reunderstanding or getting a because this was E.M.: That trust new understanding of American relationship that I was a way to walk a history and finding out really talking about with your last reader through the what was missing. question was very much a entire history of the part of the newspaper’s A.G Toward the end of the influence. So when it came, newspaper. If was book, you say that working at The a way to give them Defender helped you understand for example, to the Great the experience that the truth about race in America. Migration, The Defender was reporting accurately on 1 had of rounder- Could you talk a little bit more what was happening in standing or getting about how going through the Chicago. It was not process o f w riting this book sugarcoating things like the a new ‘understand changed your understanding of 1919 race riots or the the ing of Am erican race or inform ed it more? vicious attitudes of some out really what was whites even in Chicago E.M.: Well, I knew that there had been a lot of violence when it came to African- missing." and oppression of course from Americans. The editorial ETHAN IWiCHAELl white people against African- page would then be able to A U T H O R A N D J O U R N A L IS T Americans in the South after argue convincingly that, the Civil War. I did not know “Hey, you read the truth on how overt and popular that violence was. the news pages, but you And that oppression, the violence, was a know it’s still better than life in the South, so why don’t you join the migration to come part of a whole pattern, a whole program of oppression that went along with here.” It was able to have authority because suppressing electoral rights, suppressing it could rely on the news on the front pages. rights of economic prosperity, of A.G.: By the time Robert Abbott died, there educational attainment. All of these things were closely monitored by Southern white were a number of black newspapers. Was it authorities. It really was a totalitarian state that trust that he established in the beginning for African-Americans. And that I that eventually set The Defender apart? don’t think is well E.M.: The Defender was not always the most popular or the most highly circulated African-American newspaper. It was superseded for some time by the Pittsburgh Courier, which in the ’30s and ’40s took a very aggressive line when it came to getting the best African-American columnists around the country and focusing the newspaper as an opinion shaper. That was cutting edge for its day. Eventually, The Defender started to do very similar stuff and over time reclaimed the mantle of the most widely circulated African-American newspaper. So the black press, there’s some ebbs and flows, but it remains a powerful institution and a appreciated by people today, nor is it appreciated how creatively, thoughtfully and successfully African-Americans fought back, not just through The Defender, of course, but through myriad ways in which they resisted this kind of oppression and eventually overturned the regime, if not all of its institution. So all of that was definitely surprising and revelatory. Although, I can’t say that I walked away from the book with a great sense of optimism and a belief in progress in this country, because frankly there hasn’t been. There definitely hasn’t been enough progress. Perhaps an argument could be made that there has been some progress, but I am deeply disappointed and deeply dissatisfied that we sometimes seem to make gains in some areas only to lose more in others. In Chicago, of course, we’re dealing with the police killing of Laquan McDonald and the revelation of the video of that killing. And we had so many reactions to it, but my one thought I had was that one of the great tragedies is Laquan McDonald had been abandoned by our city and our system long before he ever got into that confrontation with the policemen. In Page 5 THE NATIONAL Negro Printer AND PUBLISHER J A N U A R Y , 1040 20c. per copy $2.00 per year C O U R T E S Y O F T H E C H IC A G O D EFEN D ER C H A R IT IES John Sengstacke on the cover of Negro Printer, January 1940. As Robert Abbott faded, the members of the black press increasingly looked to Sengstacke for leadership. a way, th a t m akes it w orse than th e m urderof Emmett Till, because E m m ett Till at least had a lot more infrastructure behind him, a lot more opportunity ahead of him, than Laquan McDonald. So that’s a real tragedy there, in addition to the tragedy of his murder. So, not to end my answer on a sad note, but I can’t say I’m sanguine about where we are in terms of progress on race. C O U R T E S Y O F T H E C H IC A G O D EFEN D ER C H A R IT IE S John Sengstacke speaks with President John F. Kennedy in 1962 at the White House. A.G.: And what lessons do you think the story of The Defender has for digital media journalists today? E.M.: I think that it’s really just a matter of time and creativity and effort until someone starts replicating the kind of success that Robert Abbott had at The Defender. There is that opportunity out there to build a mass audience for media and to have a very strong voice as a result It’s not going to be the same way that we did it in the past, but that’s what The Defender was. It was something new. Use the technology the way that you know it should be used. Others may not understand it at first and may - pooh-pooh, may scoff, may even ridicule you. But if you know that you’re right, stick to it and it will succeed. C O U R T E S Y O F A B B O T T -S E N G S T A C K E F A M IL Y PAPERS Former President Harry Truman, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and John Sengstacke ride in the 1956 Bud Billiken Parade. Truman and Daley owed much to Sengstacke personally and the African- American electorate generally.
