Robert s abbott biography summary

African American publisher and lawyer (–)

Robert Sengstacke Abbott (December 24, – February 29, )^[4] was an American lawyer, newspaper publisher and editor. Abbott founded The Chicago Defender in , which grew to have the highest circulation of any black-owned newspaper in the country.

Abbott founded the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic in August The parade, which has developed into a celebration for youth, education and African–American life in Chicago, Illinois, is the second largest parade in the United States.^[5]

Biography

Early life and education

Abbot was born on December 24, , in St.

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

His father, Thomas Abbott, died when Robert was a baby, and his widowed mother Flora Abbott (née Butler) met and married John Sengstacke, a mixed-race man of unusual background who had recently come to the US from Germany.

Sengstacke's parents were Tama, a freed slave, and her husband Herman Sengstacke, a German sea captain who had a regular route from Hamburg to Savannah.

Herman had met Tama at the Georgia port city in , where, after becoming distressed at a slave sale, he bought and freed her. They married in Charleston, South Carolina, before returning to Georgia, where their interracial marriage was prohibited. Their son, John, was born the next year. Tama died soon after their second child, a daughter, was born, and Herman took the children back to Germany to be raised by family.^[7]

John Sengstacke cared for Robert as if he were his own, and with Flora Abbot had seven additional children.

Robert was given the middle name Sengstacke to mark his belonging in the family. John Sengstacke had become a Congregationalist missionary as an adult, a teacher, determined to improve the education of African American children, and a publisher, founding the Woodville Times, based in Woodville, Georgia, a town later annexed by Savannah, Georgia; he wrote, "There is but one church, and all who are born of God are members of it.

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

Industrialization underway in the United States, Abbot studied the printing trade at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), a historically black college in Virginia, from to At Hampton, he sang with the Hampton Choir and Quartet, which toured nationally.^[6] He earned a law degree from Kent College of Law, Chicago, in

Abbott became a Prince Hall Freemason at the Oriental Lodge, No.

68, in Chicago.^[9][10]

Career

Abbott tried to set up a law practice, working for a few years in Gary, Indiana, and Topeka, Kansas. He returned home to Georgia for a period, then went back to Chicago, where he could see changes arriving with thousands of new migrants from the rural South as a part of the Great Migration.

Chicago Defender

After settling in Chicago, in Abbott founded The Chicago Defender newspaper with an initial investment of 25¢ (equivalent to $8 in ).^[11][12] He started printing in a room at his boarding house; his landlady encouraged him, and he later bought her an 8-room house.

He wanted to push for job opportunities and social justice, and was eager to persuade Black people to leave the segregated, Jim CrowSouth for Chicago.

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A key part of his distribution network was made up of African-American railroad porters, who were highly respected among Black people, and by they organized a union as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. They often sold or distributed the paper on trains. Defender circulation reached 50, by ; , by ; and more than , by the early s.

Credited with contributing to the Great Migration of rural southern Black people to Chicago, the Defender became the most widely circulated black newspaper in the country. It was known as "America's Black Newspaper." Its success resulted in Abbott becoming one of the first self-made millionaires of African-American descent; his business expanded as African Americans moved to the cities and became an urbanized, northern population.

From the early 20th century through , million Black people moved to major cities in the Northeast and Mid-West.

They were eager to know about conditions, to find housing, and to learn more about their new lives in cities. Most were from rural areas of the South.

Robert s abbott biography summary wikipedia: But, with the advanced technology of the press, there were no black printers able to run it. The Stevenses fell on hard times during the Depression, so Abbott provided help for several years. His parents, Thomas and Flora Abbott were both formerly enslaved people. At this point, his landlady, Henrietta Plumer Lee, made a decisive intervention.

From to all the southern states had passed constitutions or laws that raised barriers to voter registration and effectively disenfranchised most Black people and many poor whites. They were utterly closed out of the political systems. Schools and other public facilities reserved for Black people were typically underfunded and ill-maintained.

Legislatures imposed Jim Crow conditions, producing facilities for Black people that were "separate" but never "equal" (referring to the Plessy v. Ferguson () case, in which the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated facilities, such as railroad cars providing "separate but equal" conditions, were constitutional).

The northern and midwestern industrial centers, where Black people could vote and send children to school, were recruiting workers based on expansion of manufacturing and infrastructure to supply the US's expanding population as well as the war in Europe, which started in The Pennsylvania Railroad and others were expanding at a rapid rate across the North, needing workers for construction and later to serve the train passengers.

The Defender told stories of earlier migrants to the North, giving hope to disenfranchised and oppressed people in the South of other ways to live. Abbott, through his writings in the Chicago Defender, expressed those stories and encouraged people to leave the South for the North. He even set a date of May 15, , for what he called 'The Great Northern Drive' to occur.

In his weekly, he showed pictures of Chicago and had numerous classifieds for housing. In addition, Abbott wrote about how awful a place the South was to live in comparison to the idealistic North. Abbott's words described the North as a place of prosperity and justice. This persuasive writing, "thereby made this journal probably the greatest stimulus that the migration had."^[15]

Abbott was a fighter, a defender of rights.

He listed nine goals as the Defender's "Bible":

1. American race prejudice must be destroyed
2. Opening up all trade unions to Black people as well as whites
3. Representation in the President's Cabinet
4. Hiring black engineers, firemen, and conductors on all American railroads, and to all jobs in government
5. Gaining representation in all departments of the police forces over the entire United States
6. Government schools giving preference to American citizens before foreigners
7. Hiring black motormen and conductors on surface, elevated, and motor bus lines throughout America
8. Federal legislation to abolish lynching
9. Full enfranchisement of all American citizens

The Chicago Defender not only encouraged people to migrate north for a better life, but to fight for their rights once they got there.

The slogan of the paper and the first goal was "American race prejudice must be destroyed."^[17] Sengstacke openly discussed African-American history in his articles, including its difficult issues. He wrote, "Miscegenation began as soon as the African slaves were introduced into the colonial population and continues unabated to this day What's more, the opposition to intermarriage has heightened the interest and solidified the feelings of those who resent the injunction of racial distinction in their private and personal affairs." He believed that laws restricting personal choice in a mate violated the constitution and that the "decision of two intelligent people to mutual love and self-sacrifice should not be a matter of public concern." Abbott also published a short-lived periodical called Abbott's Monthly, whose contributor included Chester Himes and Richard Wright.

Robert s abbott biography summary of death Willard Motley and Langston Hughes were just a few of the other big names for whom the Defender was a literary home. The Defender wrote of injustices but also of a spirit that represented unapologetic Black pride, dignity and assertiveness. Robert of Reading. Biography of A.

The Defender actively promoted the northward migration of Black Southerners, particularly to Chicago; its columns not only reported on, but encouraged the Great Migration.

Bud Billiken Parade

Bud Billiken is a fiction character created by Abbott in During the Great Depression, Abbott featured Bud Billiken in the youth column of his newspaper, the Chicago Defender, as a symbol of pride, happiness, and hope for black residents.

David Kellum, co-founder of the newspaper then went on to celebrate this character by starting the “Bud Billiken Parade” in This parade is an annual parade held in Chicago. It is the largest African American parade in the United States. The parade has since featured celebrities, politicians, businessmen, and many others. It is considered the second largest parade in the United States.^[20]

Baháʼí Faith

In , Abbott met ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, head of the Baháʼí Faith, through covering a talk of his during his stay in Chicago during his journeys in the West.

By Abbott and his wife were listed as attending Baháʼí events in Chicago.^[8] After inventing the fictional character "Bud Billiken" with David Kellum for articles in the Defender, Abbott established the Bud Billiken Club. In Abbott and Kellum founded the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic. It became an occasion for African Americans to celebrate their pride and connections.^[21]

Abbott was seeking an atmosphere free of race prejudice.

Even in religious communities, he sometimes found that mixed-race African Americans who were light-skinned sometimes also demonstrated prejudice against those who were darker. Abbott officially joined the Baháʼí Faith in He had found that its convention to elect its National Spiritual Assembly seemed free of prejudice.^[8][23]

Final years and death

In , Illinois Governor Frank Lowden appointed Abbott to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations.^[24] The commission conducted studies about the changes resulting from the Great Migration; in one period, 5, African Americans were arriving in the city every week.

The Commission collected data to assess the population and published the book, The Negro in Chicago.^[6] Though some of his stepfather Sengstacke's relatives in Germany became Nazis in the s and later, Abbott continued correspondence and economic aid to those who had accepted him and his father's family.

He also assisted descendants of Captain Charles Stevens, the former owner of his enslaved birth father before emancipation. With his wealth, Abbott aided the Stevens descendants in Georgia during the Depression, and paid for the education of their children.^[8] Abbott died of Bright's disease in in Chicago.^[25] He was buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois.

His will left the newspaper in the control of his nephew, John Henry Sengstacke.

Roberts abbott The Stevenses fell on hard times during the Depression, so Abbott provided help for several years. The Defender also drew attention from the authorities. Helped by a massive migration to the North inspired by his own newspaper, he made a fortune. Abbott had steady work doing the tedious job of setting railroad time tables and correcting any errors on his own time.

Legacy

• The Robert S. Abbott House in Chicago, where he lived from to his death, was designated a National Historic Landmark in
• His childhood home in the Woodville neighborhood now in Savannah, Georgia, was designated as a city historic landmark. National Historic Landmark.
• An early biography of him was published in by Roi Ottley, The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S.

  Abbott (Chicago: H. Regnery Co., ).

• In a painting, Robert Abbott Founds the Chicago Defender, artist William McBride depicted a young Abbott founding the newspaper. The painting is now in the collection of the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago.
• Abbott is featured on the documentary series Profiles of African-American Success.
• In , Abbott was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.^[26]

References

Sources

• Lochard, Metz T. P. (). "Phylon Profile, XII: Robert S. Abbott – 'Race Leader'". Phylon. 8 (2): – doi/ JSTOR&#;
• Ottley, Roi ().

• Robert s abbott biography summary wikipedia
• Robert s abbott biography summary images
• Robert s abbott biography summary of the world

The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott. Henry Regnery. OCLC&#;

Further reading

External links