The Defender

November 9, 2015
Michaeli, a former copy editor and investigative reporter for the Defender, delivers an encyclopedic narrative of African-American history via the publishing legacy of one of the country’s largest and most influential African-American–owned newspapers. Georgia native Robert Abbott, who founded the paper in 1905, had decamped to Chicago for law school but failed to find work as an attorney because of his darker skin and Southern accent. In less than two decades, Abbott secured new printing presses and offices, offering a generation of African-Americans their first jobs in journalism. At the outset, the paper relied heavily on Pullman porters for various duties, and women played a critical role in the ranks of reporters and editors. The paper was a Chicago political force, a persistent critic of lynching, and an early chronicler of the first Great Migration, during WWI. Abbott became the “Moses of Black America,” urging blacks to flee Southern oppression. The complexity of the Defender’s place in the political ecosystem comes alive as Michaeli documents events such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1960s activism in Chicago and Barack Obama’s political rise. Though the closing chapters are uneven, Michaeli has produced an accessible and valuable history. B&w photos. Agent: Rob McQuilkin, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin.

Starred review from October 1, 2015
This chronicle of the influential black Chicago newspaper simultaneously tracks the important issues pertaining to African-American history from the turn of the 19th century. A copy editor and investigative reporter at the Defender from 1991 to 1996, journalist Michaeli tackles an enormous swath of American history in his thorough, painstaking account of the newspaper's rise to prominence. The story begins with the Georgia-born Robert Abbott, who had been so impressed by the accomplishments of the black professionals he met while visiting Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 with his singing group, the Hampton Quartet, that he stayed in the city to attend law school. He was resolved that the city needed an African-American newspaper that would " ]wake them up, ' expose the atrocities of the southern system, and make demands for justice." With scant resources, depending on subscriptions from the South Side black community, and using his landlady's dining room as a newsroom, Abbott launched his first issue of the "defender of his race" in May 1905, with a print run of 300. Subsequently, Abbott led the newspaper to prominence over four decades, becoming the mouthpiece for the seminal race issues of the day: exposing the spate of lynchings in the South; advocating for the integration of sports teams; covering race riots; agitating for the huge migration of blacks to find industrial jobs in the North, known as the Great Northern Drive; and supporting the troops in a "Jim Crow army" while carefully avoiding undermining the war effort. As the Defender's mantle of leadership was assumed by Abbott's nephew John Sengstacke in 1940, the paper took on the role of galvanizing the black electorate, which would become key in the presidential elections of Harry Truman (1948) and John F. Kennedy (1960), the Chicago mayoral upset by Harold Washington in 1983, and Barack Obama's astonishing homegrown surge in 2003. Michaeli has obviously put a considerable amount of care into the research and crafting of this important history. A pertinent, well-fashioned American success saga.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 15, 2015

From the Golden Isles of Georgia, Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1870-1940) made his way to Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition--and a meeting with the incomparable civil rights advocate Frederick Douglass, whose example as a black leader and publisher inspired Abbott to complete studies in the printing trade at the Hampton Institute in Virginia and later return to Chicago where, in 1905, he invested $25 to found a newspaper he sold door-to-door. The longtime weekly became one of the nation's most influential publications, known widely as "America's Black Newspaper" with its title The Defender declaring its role. Chicago-based journalist and former Defender reporter Michaeli unfolds the paper's story from its first 2[ four-page issue to its endorsing the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008. Michaeli details the story of the newspaper and the family of "race men" who operated it, moving from Abbott to his nephew John H. Sengstacke (1912-97) and reviewing the history of black Chicago and signal events of the 20th-century African American struggle for civil rights as the newspaper covered it. VERDICT Engagingly written and copiously sourced, Michaeli's stimulating read treating central personalities and an iconic institution offers general readers and scholars alike a focused look back at 20th-century battles against America's pervasive racism. [See Prepub Alert, 7/20/15.]--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.