Week 16 – CULTURE – Robert Sengstacke Abbott and the Chicago Defender

Robert Sengstacke Abbott was born on November 28. 1868, to parents Flora Butler and Thomas Abbott. Both of Robert Abbott’s parents had formerly been enslaved on St. Simons Island, where their son was born, and Thomas Abbott died there when Robert was only four months old. Flora and her infant son soon moved to Savannah, and when Robert was six years old, Flora married John Hermann Henry Sengstacke, whose family name Robert adopted as his own middle name.

Throughout Robert’s childhood, his mother and stepfather instilled values of hard work and ingenuity. John Sengstacke undertook many ventures. He was a Congregationalist minister, a schoolteacher and advocate for the education of African American children, and the publisher of at least two newspapers near Savannah—the Woodville Times and West End Post. Robert was educated in printing at Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, in Virginia, and he later earned a law degree from Chicago’s Kent College of Law, graduating in 1898 as the only African American in his class.

Robert Abbott tried unsuccessfully to establish a law practice in the Midwest. In 1905, he returned to printing and newspaper publishing, trades he had learned from his family and from his education. The newspaper he founded that year, the Chicago Defender, would grow from humble beginnings to become one of the foremost African American newspapers in the country. It was the first newspaper of its kind to reach a circulation of over 100,000, with two-thirds of those readers located outside of Chicago. By the 1920s, the paper’s success had made Robert Abbott one of the country’s first African American millionaires.

The Chicago Defender took a strong stance on issues that affected its readers, publishing statements like “American race prejudice must be destroyed” and pushing for “full enfranchisement of all American citizens” as part of its core beliefs. White distributers often refused to carry the paper, and it was smuggled on trains to southern readers by Pullman porters and traveling African American entertainers. Today, the Chicago Defender is remembered for its advocacy for African Americans and for encouraging thousands to take part in the Great Migration. Robert Abbott died in 1940, and on St. Simons, he is remembered for his business successes, his commitment to justice, and the monument he built near Fort Frederica in memory of his aunt and his father. Abbott’s memory also lives on through a namesake organization, the Robert S. Abbott Race Unity Institute, which works to foster communication and collaboration within our Coastal Georgia community. More information about the Abbott Institute can be found at https://theabbottinstitute.org/.