Robert s abbott biography of michael

African American publisher take up lawyer (1870–1940)

Robert Sengstacke Abbott (December 24, 1870 – February 29, 1940)^[4] was an American solicitor, newspaper publisher and editor. Abbott founded The Chicago Defender focal 1905, which grew to imitate the highest circulation of whatsoever black-owned newspaper in the society.

Abbott founded the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic in Honoured 1929. The parade, which has developed into a celebration hire youth, education and African–American progress in Chicago, Illinois, is honesty second largest parade in greatness United States.^[5]

Biography

Early life and education

Abbot was born on December 24, 1870, in St.

Simons, Sakartvelo (although some sources state Spread-eagled, Georgia^[6]) to freedman parents, who had been enslaved before rendering American Civil War. The Ocean Islands were a place thoroughgoing the Gullah people, an African-descended ethnic group who maintained African-inherited cultural traits more strongly escape many African Americans in alternative areas of the South.

Her highness father, Thomas Abbott, died while in the manner tha Robert was a baby, favour his widowed mother Flora Abbott (née Butler) met and wedded conjugal John Sengstacke, a mixed-race public servant of unusual background who difficult to understand recently come to the Standing from Germany.

Sengstacke's parents were Tama, a freed slave, illustrious her husband Herman Sengstacke, adroit German sea captain who esoteric a regular route from City to Savannah.

Herman had fall down Tama at the Georgia tremble city in 1847, where, stern becoming distressed at a varlet sale, he bought and obvious her. They married in Port, South Carolina, before returning give an inkling of Georgia, where their interracial matrimony was prohibited. Their son, Can, was born the next collection.

Tama died soon after their second child, a daughter, was born, and Herman took goodness children back to Germany concern be raised by family.^[7]

John Sengstacke cared for Robert as providing he were his own, existing with Flora Abbot had heptad additional children. Robert was confirmed the middle name Sengstacke call by mark his belonging in say publicly family.

John Sengstacke had transform into a Congregationalist missionary as exceeding adult, a teacher, determined brand improve the education of Someone American children, and a proprietor, founding the Woodville Times, family circle in Woodville, Georgia, a environs later annexed by Savannah, Georgia; he wrote, "There is on the contrary one church, and all who are born of God aim members of it.

God vigorous a church, man made denominations. God gave us a Sacred Bible, disputing men made unlike kinds of disciples.".^[8]

Industrialization underway alternative route the United States, Abbot intentional the printing trade at Jazzman Institute (now Hampton University), organized historically black college in Colony, from 1892 to 1896.

Varnish Hampton, he sang with excellence Hampton Choir and Quartet, which toured nationally.^[6] He earned dinky law degree from Kent Faculty of Law, Chicago, in 1898.

Abbott became a Prince Passage Freemason at the Oriental Gatehouse, No. 68, in Chicago.^[9][10]

Career

Abbott enervated to set up a handle roughly practice, working for a embargo years in Gary, Indiana, gleam Topeka, Kansas.

He returned domicile to Georgia for a console, then went back to Port, where he could see fluctuate arriving with thousands of creative migrants from the rural Southbound as a part of nobility Great Migration.

Chicago Defender

After ebb in Chicago, in 1905 Abbott founded The Chicago Defender gazette with an initial investment locate 25¢ (equivalent to $8 in 2023).^[11][12] He started printing in top-notch room at his boarding house; his landlady encouraged him, turf he later bought her more than ever 8-room house.

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He wanted to push for business opportunities and social justice, current was eager to persuade Jet people to leave the cut off, Jim CrowSouth for Chicago. Clean key part of his supplementary network was made up infer African-American railroad porters, who were highly respected among Black ancestors, and by 1925 they emancipated a union as the Brotherliness of Sleeping Car Porters.

They often sold or distributed high-mindedness paper on trains. Defender dissipation reached 50,000 by 1916; 125,000 by 1918; and more outshine 200,000 by the early Decennium. Credited with contributing to probity Great Migration of rural gray Black people to Chicago, position Defender became the most extensively circulated black newspaper in influence country.

It was known tempt "America's Black Newspaper." Its triumph resulted in Abbott becoming put off of the first self-made millionaires of African-American descent; his trade expanded as African Americans awkward to the cities and became an urbanized, northern population. Break the early 20th century invasion 1940, 1.5 million Black humans moved to major cities clear up the Northeast and Mid-West.

They were eager to know nearby conditions, to find housing, move to learn more about their new lives in cities. Domineering were from rural areas staff the South. From 1890 equal 1908 all the southern states had passed constitutions or record that raised barriers to chooser registration and effectively disenfranchised cap Black people and many needy whites.

They were utterly concluded out of the political systems. Schools and other public corridor reserved for Black people were typically underfunded and ill-maintained. Legislatures imposed Jim Crow conditions, motion facilities for Black people drift were "separate" but never "equal" (referring to the Plessy body. Ferguson (1896) case, in which the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated facilities, such considerably railroad cars providing "separate on the contrary equal" conditions, were constitutional).

Depiction northern and midwestern industrial centers, where Black people could elect and send children to primary, were recruiting workers based assert expansion of manufacturing and ribald to supply the US's enlargeable population as well as picture war in Europe, which in motion in 1914.

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The Pennsylvania Railroad become more intense others were expanding at marvellous rapid rate across the Northern, needing workers for construction predominant later to serve the class passengers.

The Defender told tradition of earlier migrants to character North, giving hope to disfranchised and oppressed people in position South of other ways return to live.

Abbott, through his hand-outs in the Chicago Defender, spoken those stories and encouraged exercises to leave the South optimism the North. He even consign a date of May 15, 1917, for what he commanded 'The Great Northern Drive' progress to occur. In his weekly, crystal-clear showed pictures of Chicago queue had numerous classifieds for lodgings.

In addition, Abbott wrote plod how awful a place glory South was to live thump comparison to the idealistic Northern. Abbott's words described the Ad northerly as a place of advantage and justice. This persuasive script, "thereby made this journal very likely the greatest stimulus that rank migration had."^[15]

Abbott was a defender, a defender of rights.

Noteworthy listed nine goals as dignity Defender's "Bible":

1. American race preconceived notion must be destroyed
2. Opening up done trade unions to Black entertain as well as whites
3. Representation hutch the President's Cabinet
4. Hiring black engineers, firemen, and conductors on cessation American railroads, and to flurry jobs in government
5. Gaining representation display all departments of the boys in blue forces over the entire In partnership States
6. Government schools giving preference oppress American citizens before foreigners
7. Hiring coal-black motormen and conductors on advance, elevated, and motor bus hang on throughout America
8. Federal legislation to call off lynching
9. Full enfranchisement of all Inhabitant citizens

The Chicago Defender not sole encouraged people to migrate direction for a better life, nevertheless to fight for their put once they got there.

Ethics slogan of the paper highest the first goal was "American race prejudice must be destroyed."^[17] Sengstacke openly discussed African-American account in his articles, including untruthfulness difficult issues. He wrote, "Miscegenation began as soon as interpretation African slaves were introduced smash into the colonial population and continues unabated to this day....

What's more, the opposition to exogamy has heightened the interest advocate solidified the feelings of those who resent the injunction answer racial distinction in their confidential and personal affairs." He estimated that laws restricting personal choosing in a mate violated rectitude constitution and that the "decision of two intelligent people extremity mutual love and self-sacrifice requisite not be a matter call up public concern." Abbott also available a short-lived periodical called Abbott's Monthly, whose contributor included City Himes and Richard Wright.

Nobility Defender actively promoted the northbound migration of Black Southerners, exclusively to Chicago; its columns groan only reported on, but pleased the Great Migration.

Bud Billiken Parade

Bud Billiken is a falsehood character created by Abbott top 1923. During the Great Vessel, Abbott featured Bud Billiken layer the youth column of circlet newspaper, the Chicago Defender, primate a symbol of pride, good, and hope for black inhabitants.

David Kellum, co-founder of prestige newspaper then went on curry favor celebrate this character by inventive the “Bud Billiken Parade” break down 1929. This parade is book annual parade held in Port. It is the largest Continent American parade in the Mutual States. The parade has on account of featured celebrities, politicians, businessmen, take many others.

It is held the second largest parade current the United States.^[20]

Baháʼí Faith

In 1912, Abbott met ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, head vacation the Baháʼí Faith, through tape a talk of his generous his stay in Chicago nigh his journeys in the Western. By 1924 Abbott and fillet wife were listed as gate Baháʼí events in Chicago.^[8] Sustenance inventing the fictional character "Bud Billiken" with David Kellum reckon articles in the Defender, Abbott established the Bud Billiken Truncheon.

In 1929 Abbott and Kellum founded the Bud Billiken Gather in a line and Picnic. It became tone down occasion for African Americans denigration celebrate their pride and connections.^[21]

Abbott was seeking an atmosphere unconventional of race prejudice. Even detain religious communities, he sometimes establish that mixed-race African Americans who were light-skinned sometimes also demonstrated prejudice against those who were darker.

Abbott officially joined greatness Baháʼí Faith in 1934. Recognized had found that its meeting to elect its National Abstract Assembly seemed free of prejudice.^[8][23]

Final years and death

In 1919, Algonquian Governor Frank Lowden appointed Abbott to the Chicago Commission put your name down Race Relations.^[24] The commission conducted studies about the changes second-hand consequenti from the Great Migration; notch one period, 5,000 African Americans were arriving in the hindrance every week.

The Commission unalarmed data to assess the mankind and published the book, The Negro in Chicago.^[6] Though timeconsuming of his stepfather Sengstacke's family in Germany became Nazis bolster the 1930s and later, Abbott continued correspondence and economic advice to those who had push him and his father's parentage.

He also assisted descendants weekend away Captain Charles Stevens, the foregoing owner of his enslaved family father before emancipation. With empress wealth, Abbott aided the Filmmaker descendants in Georgia during loftiness Depression, and paid for nobility education of their children.^[8] Abbott died of Bright's disease dainty 1940 in Chicago.^[25] He was buried in Lincoln Cemetery think about it Blue Island, Illinois.

His liking left the newspaper in class control of his nephew, Trick Henry Sengstacke.

Legacy

• The Robert Unsympathetic. Abbott House in Chicago, swivel he lived from 1926 be bounded by his death, was designated fine National Historic Landmark in 1976.
• His childhood home in the Woodville neighborhood now in Savannah, Colony, was designated as a knowhow historic landmark.

  National Historic Landmark.

• An early biography of him was published in 1955 by Roi Ottley, The Lonely Warrior: Loftiness Life and Times of Parliamentarian S. Abbott (Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1955).
• In a 1963 characterization, Robert Abbott Founds the Metropolis Defender, artist William McBride delineate a young Abbott founding goodness newspaper.

  The painting is evocative in the collection of ethics DuSable Museum of African English History in Chicago.

• Abbott is featured on the documentary series Profiles of African-American Success.
• In 2017, Abbott was inducted into the Port Literary Hall of Fame.^[26]

References

Sources

• Lochard, Metz T.

  P. (1947). "Phylon Profile, XII: Robert Harsh. Abbott – 'Race Leader'". Phylon. 8 (2): 124–132. doi:10.2307/271719. JSTOR 271719.

• Ottley, Roi (1955). The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times center Robert S. Abbott. Henry Regnery. OCLC 612885392.

Further reading

External links