Ethan Michaeli, “The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)

New Books in African American Studies · Oct 27, 2016 · 1h 5m

In his new book The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), Ethan Michaeli charts the riveting history of the Chicago Defender, one of the nation’s longest running and most significant black periodicals. Founded in 1905 by publisher Robert S. Abbott, the Defender came to play a central role in regional and national black politics; drawing African Americans north to Chicago as part of the Great Migration out of the South, condemning Jim Crow and bolstering the electoral power of black America, and helping to secure the election of…