The black experience in wwI and the press

Before the United States even entered WWI, the Defender had an outlined stance regarding blacks’ involvement in the military activity and goals of the country. That was that all African-Americans were just that – Americans, and as such, they will fight to defend their nation but while doing so, will not forget the mistreatment of them by the whites of the country for so many years.[4] Writing in a May 1916 issue, Abbott himself explained this stance: “Why aid a people who continually oppress you? First of all, we are fighting our own battles, only incidentally are we aiding the whites. It must be borne in mind that this is our country…”[5]

With that sentiment in mind, when the war broke out, the Defender’s stance on US entry into it paralleled that of President Woodrow Wilson. The paper set forth a position of neutrality, though reporting often on the French black troops fighting along their white counterparts overseas, the paper often mentioned the possibility of a benefit for black soldiers fighting in the US military in the event that the country did in fact enter the war.[6] When the country finally entered the war in 1917, the paper was supportive, lauding that blacks would be able to fight equally alongside whites. There were, however, grievances that the paper did not hold back regarding treatment of black troops during the war. They railed against the separate training camps for black and white soldiers[7] as well as the initial barring from the red cross of black nurses.[8]

One aspect of the black experience during the war that the paper reported on with immense enthusiasm was the Eighth Illinois National Guard. The “Fighting Eighth,” as they were nicknamed were an all-black fighting regiment from Chicago’s South Side and they were always in the Defender’s pages. This was because many of the paper’s readers in Chicago either knew or were related to somebody fighting overseas in the Fighting Eighth, so news of their whereabouts, activities, and welfare was eagerly awaited for as long as they were fighting.[9]

Following the end of WWI, the Defender would continue to maintain its influence over its black readership all over the country. It’s next event of influence was its help in sparking large numbers of blacks to move from the South to the North and West of the country during what is now called The Great Migration. Carl Sandburg, a writer for the Chicago Daily News wrote of the Defender that, “The Defender more than any other agency was the big cause of the northern fever and the big exodus from the South.”[10] In fact, during the time of The Great Migration, the circulation of the Defender was estimated at 250,000 with most of the papers being delivered south of the Mason-Dixon Line, in small towns and cities alike, being read then passed along and shared, to be read by others.[11] What the Defender reported on that was so stirring for many Southern blacks was the “racist and curupt South.”[12] It would report on hate crimes and violence against blacks in the South with aggressive rhetoric, calling for black migration to the North and West. The paper’s talk of new beginnings for blacks in the North is what helped draw thousands out of the South.

Now those who moved north were not free of prejudice and violence. Especially in Chicago, but also on a national scale, riots and mobs against blacks perpetrated by whites unable to accept the increase black populations in their cities in the North. The Defender would report on the violence by informing its readers of violent events, for example, a July 12, 1919, during what came to be known in Chicago as the Red Summer,[13] the paper reported that twenty-five African-Americans had been lynched so far that year.[14] The Defender would even include in its issue recommendations for safer living in Chicago for blacks in Chicago. For example, in a July 5, 1919 issue, the paper recommends the Lake Michigan 25^th Street Beach, where “every precaution is being taken to safeguard the interest of the bathers.”[15]

Without the Defender, or it’s valuable reporting and influence on the black community of the WWI era and beyond in the United States, perhaps the country would be very different. Perhaps The Great Migration never would have taken place to the extent to which it did. Perhaps the stories of The Fighting Eighth would never have be as known as they are today. Without the Defender, the stories, pain, and lives of the African-Americans in Chicago, and all over the United States during The Great War could not have been as connected as they became, under the watchful and fearless eye of the Defender.

Created by Scott Clancy

[1] Vander Voort, Henry C., and Loyola University Chicago. Department of History. Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender : A Study in Negro Journalism and Reform, 1910-1920. 1970, P. 49.

[2] Vander Voort, Henry C., and Loyola University Chicago. Department of History. Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender : A Study in Negro Journalism and Reform, 1910-1920. 1970, P. 50

[3] Vander Voort, Henry C., and Loyola University Chicago. Department of History. Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender : A Study in Negro Journalism and Reform, 1910-1920. 1970, P. 49.

[4] Vander Voort, Henry C., and Loyola University Chicago. Department of History. Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender : A Study in Negro Journalism and Reform, 1910-1920. 1970, P. 54.

[5] Editorial, "First in Everything American,” Chicago Defender, May 6, 1916, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender.

[6] Vander Voort, Henry C., and Loyola University Chicago. Department of History. Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender : A Study in Negro Journalism and Reform, 1910-1920. 1970, P. 54.

[7] Editorial, “Jim Crow Training Camp – No!” Chicago Defender, April 14, 1917, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender.

[8] Editorial, “Our Nurses in the War” The Chicago Defender, July 20, 1918, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender.

[9] Vander Voort, Henry C., and Loyola University Chicago. Department of History. Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender : A Study in Negro Journalism and Reform, 1910-1920. 1970, P 57-58.

[10] Sandburg, cited in Desantis, Alan D. "Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners: The Chicago Defender and the Great Migration of 1915–1919." Western Journal of Communication 62, no. 4 (1998): 477.

[11] Desantis, Alan D. "Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners: The Chicago Defender and the Great Migration of 1915–1919." Western Journal of Communication 62, no. 4 (1998): 478.

[12] The Defender Headline, December 2, 1916.

[13] Tuttle, William M. Race Riot : Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919. Illini Books ed. Blacks in the New World. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

[14] “Issue Lynching Record For First Six Months,” The Chicago Defender (Big Weekend Edition), July 12, 1919, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender.

[15] Chicago Defender, July 5, 1919, cited in Tuttle, William M. Race Riot : Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919. Illini Books ed. Blacks in the New World. Urbana, Ill.: (University of Illinois Press, 1996), 3.

[16] Photographer Unknown, Robert S. Abbott.

[17] Photographer Unknown, Fighting Eighth on the Deck of the La France.

[18] University of Chicago Press.