Robert Sengstacke Abbott was born on St. Simon’s island in 1868 and raised in Savannah. He attended law school in Chicago.
When Abbott couldn’t find a job as a lawyer, he turned to journalism and founded the Chicago Defender. Within a decade it became the most important African-American newspaper in the country. By 1929 the Defender sold more than 250,000 copies a week and with an audience far beyond Chicago, it helped develop a national African-American culture.
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