Robert Sengstacke Abbott – November 24, 1868 – February 29, 1940

Lived at 4742 S. Martin Luther King Drive, Chicago – now a historic landmark

Most people make it through life unscathed by public opinion. Robert S. Abbott was not one of those people.

From errand boy to lawyer to publisher, as the founder of one of the most read Black newspapers in the U.S., Robert Sengstacke Abbott gave voice to a black point of view that had been rendered mute in the early twentieth century.

Born in Georgia to a couple whose parents had been slaves, Abbott was still a baby when his father, Thomas Abbott, died of leukemia. His mother, Flora, later married John Sengstacke, a mulatto of German descent who promptly added Sengstacke to Robert’s name. Abbott graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia. After college he moved to Chicago, a city that he had been exposed to while singing with the Hampton College Quartet at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. He graduated from Chicago’s Kent College of Law in 1898, but because of racial prejudice he was unable to practice law. Armed with a printing background and academic credentials he sought self-sufficiency by converting a $25 investment into the Chicago Defender Newspaper.

With the assistance of J. Hockley Smiley, The Chicago Defender became the literary domain for racial advancement. The Defender actively promoted the northward migration of Black Southerners, particularly to Chicago. Its columns not only reported on the movement, but helped to bring about 1917’s “Great Northern Drive,” a term coined by Abbott himself. By the early 20s, The Defender’s circulation reached more than 200,000 people. Distribution of the paper was facilitated by Black railroad porters who both read and shared The Defender. No other Black paper came close to such a national distribution program. The Defender wrote of injustices but also of a spirit “that represented unapologetic Black pride, dignity and assertiveness.”

Married twice, Abbott had no children.  The Chicago Defender was left in the capable hands of his nephew John H.H. Sengstacke III.

Saul Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972)

“Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I'll start organizing the have-nots over there.”

Born in Chicago in 1909 to Russian immigrant parents, Saul Alinsky worked his way through the University of Chicago, then dropped out of grad school to organize Chicago’s Woodlawn area to battle slum conditions. He went on to do the same thing in other US cities. Published the year before he died in 1972, Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals has been compared with the writing of Thomas Paine, and it inspired many young idealists (including, apparently, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who wrote her Wellesley College senior thesis on Alinsky).  "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be,” Alinsky begins his book. “The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."  Time magazine once wrote that "American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas," and conservative author William F. Buckley said he was "very close to being an organizational genius." Alinsky’s name was cast into the 2012 presidential campaign when Republican candidate Newt Gingrich repeatedly likened President Barack Obama to Alinksy in his speeches.