Robert Abbot

Robert Abbott

(November 24, 1868 – February 29, 1940)PBS.ORG – Robert Sengstacke Abbott was an American lawyer, newspaper editor, and publisher. He founded The Chicago Defender, the most influential Black American newspaper at the time. It became the most widely circulated Black newspaper in the country.

Early life
Abbott was born on November 24, 1868, in Frederica, Saint Simons, Georgia (although some sources say he was born in Savannah, Georgia).

He studied printing at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), a historically black college in Virginia. He graduated from Kent College of Law, a law school (now Chicago–Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago, 1899.

The Chicago Defender
In 1905 Abbott founded The Chicago Defender, a newspaper which defended the rights of Black Americans, and became known as "America's Black Newspaper". It printed editorials that attacked white oppression and the lynching of Black Americans. The editorials were popular among Black Americans in the Southern United States.

The Defender positive reporting on opportunities for Black Americans in the Northern states played a part in making many Black Southerners move North during the Great Migration.

Abbott was editor of The Chicago Defender until he died on February 29, 1940, in Chicago.

References

 Other websites 
Robert Abbott, Encyclopædia Britannica for Kids.

PBS: Robert Sengstacke Abbott
PBS: The Chicago Defender
Pablo J. Davis, "Robert S. Abbott," New Georgia Encyclopedia 
Robert Sengstacke Abbott Boyhood Home: Founder of the Chicago Defender historical marker

Category:1870 births
Category:1940 deaths
Category:Deaths from nephritis
Category:African-American writers
Category:American editors
Category:Writers from Chicago
Category:Lawyers from Chicago
Category:Lawyers from Georgia (U.S. state)