A Great Newspaper Publisher Dies
by: Dr. Clint Wilson
It was ironic -- yet fitting somehow -- that the very morning a new national organization for Black newspaper publishers was being created in Chicago, word was received that the greatest publisher of them all had died just a few miles away. He was Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of The Chicago Defender.
His nephew, John Sengstacke, had convened the top African-American publishers from around the nation to see about “harmonizing our energies in a common purpose for the benefit of Negro journalism.”
Soon after the first morning session of the new Negro Newspaper Publishers Association convention was gaveled to order, the members drafted a resolution of condolences to Abbott’s widow and adjourned in his memory until 1:30 p.m. Abbott’s early morning death prevented his own paper from carrying the story until the following week and by then it was the major story in Black journals everywhere. The California Eagle story of March 7, 1940 began as follows:
CHI MAYOR IN TRIBUTE TO ABBOTT
Hold Final Rites for Editor Chicago Defender Editor’s Death a Shock to Country
CHICAGO, Mar. 7 – In a church filled with notables from every walk of life, funeral services were held Monday for Robert Sengstacke Abbott, pioneer Chicago journalist, who for 35 years guided the columns of the world’s best known Negro newspaper, The Chicago Defender.
No church in Chicago would have been large enough to hold the crowds which sought entrance. Although Abbott was a lifelong Presbyterian, a member of the Grace Presbyterian church here, relatives chose a larger church, one which he had especially loved, the Metropolitan Community church in the heart of Chicago’s great southside. It was packed to capacity and crowds thronged the street outside.
Too late to make the deadline on his own national edition, and most of the Negro newspapers of the Nation, Abbott died in his South Parkway mansion last Thursday morning at 7 o’clock. He was 69. He had been ill 7 years.
Death of the great journalist came as a shock to the Nation, although rumors of it had been circulated three weeks ago. He had been failing rapidly for the past two months.
BORN IN GEORGIA
Abbott was born Nov. 24, 1870 at St. Simon’s Island, Ga. His parents were freshly freed Georgia slaves. Educated at Clafin College and in the printing trades at Hampton Institute, he came to Chicago in 1895 at the age of 25. He founded the Defender 9 years later.
-- California Eagle, March 7, 1940
|
