Robert Sengstacke Abbott
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Robert Sengstacke Abbott (24 November 1870 [1][2][3] - February 29, 1940) was an African American lawyer and newspaper publisher.
Born in Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia of former slave parents, Abbott studied the printing trade at Hampton Institute from 1892 to 1896. He received a law degree from Kent College of Law, Chicago in 1898, but because of race prejudice in the United States was unable to practice, despite attempts to establish law offices in Gary, Indiana, Topeka, Kansas, and Chicago, Illinois.
In 1905 he founded The Chicago Defender with an initial investment of 25 cents. The Defender, which was once heralded as "The World's Greatest Weekly", soon became the most widely circulated black newspaper in the country, and made Abbott one of the first self-made millionaires of African American descent. Abbott also published a short-lived paper called Abbott's Monthly.
Robert Sengstacke Abbott died of Bright's disease in 1940 and was interred in the Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago.
His will left the newspaper in the control of his nephew, John Henry Sengstacke. His legacy also continues through Chicago's largest African American public event, the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic, which he helped to found in 1929.
[edit] References
- Boris, Joseph J., ed. Who's Who in Colored America (1928-1929), Who's Who in Colored America Corp., New York, 1929, p. 1
- Taitt, John, The Souvenir of Negro Progress, Chicago, 1779-1925, The De Saible Association, Inc., [Chicago, 1925?], p. 27
- Watkins, Sylvestre C., The Pocket Book of Negro Facts, Bookmark Press, Chicago, 1946, p. 1
