...but I can't tell if he REALLY loves me.
I can tell this post will go on forever. Men have so much ego and pride--i really feel bad for them sometimes because they have to carry all of that stuff around. I think I get on my Boyfriend's last nerve sometimes because I'm so "out there" but he knows I truly do love him but I guess just not enough.
I know he doesn't love me enough to shut his trap about my numerous faults.
I know I'm flawed.
Tonight I told him his opinion just didn't matter to me anymore and I think that made him angry.
Maybe I should learn how to better walk on eggshells. One would think I'd know how by now--considering I've been doing it all of my life.
Pay attention: The Earth is Changing and we are the last generation positioned to do anything about it. “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
Monday, October 03, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Observation #1
Matches don't burn forever so make sure you have a steady supply if you want to keep a fire going or stay warm.
Matches have but one purpose: to make a quick flame that burns short.
You have to make sure that whatever you are trying to light catches quick to make a flame because a match will do what a match does--burn out.
If you hold it too long, it will burn your fingers before buring out.
But why holla about it because at the end of the day, it was just a match and that is the nature of matches.
###
Matches have but one purpose: to make a quick flame that burns short.
You have to make sure that whatever you are trying to light catches quick to make a flame because a match will do what a match does--burn out.
If you hold it too long, it will burn your fingers before buring out.
But why holla about it because at the end of the day, it was just a match and that is the nature of matches.
###
Sunday, September 11, 2005
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill
Copyright 2005
People with mental illness still have many stereotypes to combat. Sometimes care givers may choose to ignore signs and symptoms hoping to manage their loved one his or herself.
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill member, Regina Richardson, said she felt that way
about her then 19-year-old son, nine years ago.
" He was at a party and someone put a mickey in his drink. I was told after the fact. He
didn't know and we didn't know what we were dealing with," she said.
Richardson occasionally wiped away tears as she recalled the years after the incident. She
characterized her son's condition as a "nervous breakdown" and said he wasn't connected
with reality.
"A person really doesn't know what they are doing to themselves or others. He became angry,
frustrated and his personality changed. He wouldn't listen to me," she said.
The breaking point came one evening after work. She told her son she was too tired to
take him to his father's house. He became incorrigible.
"He had just taken a bath and still had on his robe and gym shoes," she said.
Determined to get to his father's house, he walked outside dressed as he was in the middle of winter.
He was headed to the interstate--determined to see his father--and she said and the only immediate help was from a neighbor who drove around to find him. He was still dressed in his robe, waving his arms frantically while standing in the middle of traffic on the interstate.
Thereafter, Richardson said she knew her son needed help. She said the support she received through NAMI was invaluable.
NAMI is a nonprofit, grassroots, self-help, support and advocacy organization of consumers, families, and friends of people with severe mental illnesses. Mental illness is a growing concern throughout the United States and the local Gary Chapter works on issues most important to the community and state, the organization's web site read.
Richardson's son is 28-years old and he lives and works in Indianapolis. Richardson said she is proud of her son. He has his own place and his diagnosis of bipolar disorder is being managed with medication.
"He only has to take one pill a day," she said.
Although he couldn't make it to the second annual NAMI picnic Saturday held at Edgewater Systems for Balanced Living, Richardson was there working the grill.
"She's a good supporter of NAMI. What we want people to see is what biological brain disorder clients could be with treatment," Kathy Burney, a state representative of NAMI and local chapter leader,
said.
NAMI has many programs. The Crisis Intervention Team which is a collaboration between the Gary Police Department and Gary City Court that train law enforcement how to interact with clients who are in crisis so that injury is less likely. There are also support group meetings held.
Robert Nagan, director of the Brief Evaluation and Treatment Unit at Edgewater, said
clients with head injuries may exhibit behaviors characterized as unpredictable while in
crisis.
"Head injuries create damage that bring disturbances to the brain's chemistry and bring on
signs of mental illness," he said.
Burney said the socialization between clients at the picnic is a form of treatment that many may not often get to do because the symptoms they may exhibit--especially if in crisis--can frighten others. She said NAMI fights against the stigma placed on its clients.
###
People with mental illness still have many stereotypes to combat. Sometimes care givers may choose to ignore signs and symptoms hoping to manage their loved one his or herself.
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill member, Regina Richardson, said she felt that way
about her then 19-year-old son, nine years ago.
" He was at a party and someone put a mickey in his drink. I was told after the fact. He
didn't know and we didn't know what we were dealing with," she said.
Richardson occasionally wiped away tears as she recalled the years after the incident. She
characterized her son's condition as a "nervous breakdown" and said he wasn't connected
with reality.
"A person really doesn't know what they are doing to themselves or others. He became angry,
frustrated and his personality changed. He wouldn't listen to me," she said.
The breaking point came one evening after work. She told her son she was too tired to
take him to his father's house. He became incorrigible.
"He had just taken a bath and still had on his robe and gym shoes," she said.
Determined to get to his father's house, he walked outside dressed as he was in the middle of winter.
He was headed to the interstate--determined to see his father--and she said and the only immediate help was from a neighbor who drove around to find him. He was still dressed in his robe, waving his arms frantically while standing in the middle of traffic on the interstate.
Thereafter, Richardson said she knew her son needed help. She said the support she received through NAMI was invaluable.
NAMI is a nonprofit, grassroots, self-help, support and advocacy organization of consumers, families, and friends of people with severe mental illnesses. Mental illness is a growing concern throughout the United States and the local Gary Chapter works on issues most important to the community and state, the organization's web site read.
Richardson's son is 28-years old and he lives and works in Indianapolis. Richardson said she is proud of her son. He has his own place and his diagnosis of bipolar disorder is being managed with medication.
"He only has to take one pill a day," she said.
Although he couldn't make it to the second annual NAMI picnic Saturday held at Edgewater Systems for Balanced Living, Richardson was there working the grill.
"She's a good supporter of NAMI. What we want people to see is what biological brain disorder clients could be with treatment," Kathy Burney, a state representative of NAMI and local chapter leader,
said.
NAMI has many programs. The Crisis Intervention Team which is a collaboration between the Gary Police Department and Gary City Court that train law enforcement how to interact with clients who are in crisis so that injury is less likely. There are also support group meetings held.
Robert Nagan, director of the Brief Evaluation and Treatment Unit at Edgewater, said
clients with head injuries may exhibit behaviors characterized as unpredictable while in
crisis.
"Head injuries create damage that bring disturbances to the brain's chemistry and bring on
signs of mental illness," he said.
Burney said the socialization between clients at the picnic is a form of treatment that many may not often get to do because the symptoms they may exhibit--especially if in crisis--can frighten others. She said NAMI fights against the stigma placed on its clients.
###
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
The never ending story begins...
Lordy, now the news reports say that the governor of LA and the President weren't on the best of terms and their infighting delayed help to the hurricane victims.
Dang. Now all we need is a target.
Who will be this episode's fall guy?
Will it be the most selfish or the most incompetent?
I'm just waiting for a spate of wrongful death lawsuits, citing negligence and mismanagement of funds.
I could see how that can happen but I'm not a lawyer.
It doesn't matter that LA government officials didn't want to cooperate. A whole state was wiped out. A state of taxpayers. State, city and possibly local taxes taken out of your check goes to run your government. (Does LA state take taxes out of their worker's checks?)
On top of tourist dollars.
The money was supposed to go to government infrastructure--tax dollars help run governments.
Where did the hurricane victim's tax dollars go?
Was it to the repair of the levee or emergency evacuation plans?
I guess neither.
Volunteerism at its best...
• Louisiana residents who suffered losses from a natural disaster can claim a refund of state taxes paid.
http://www.bankrate.com/yho/itax/edit/state/profiles/state_tax_La.asp
http://www.rev.state.la.us/
It might help.
This morning, I heard one of the news commentators on Fox & Friends morning news show ask (hypothetically?) where are all of the Black rappers. Hers was the first face I saw upon awaking and I almost fell back on the pillow with laughter. I was so outdone.
She commented that since most of the victims are poor and black--and since that is mainly their audience--why don't they (step their game up) and help out with the disaster relief.
I will not issue an opinion on what this lady said. She has a right to her opinion as we all should have rights--in other words, I will hold my tongue on this one.
I just love it when we stop walking on eggshells.
Dang. Now all we need is a target.
Who will be this episode's fall guy?
Will it be the most selfish or the most incompetent?
I'm just waiting for a spate of wrongful death lawsuits, citing negligence and mismanagement of funds.
I could see how that can happen but I'm not a lawyer.
It doesn't matter that LA government officials didn't want to cooperate. A whole state was wiped out. A state of taxpayers. State, city and possibly local taxes taken out of your check goes to run your government. (Does LA state take taxes out of their worker's checks?)
On top of tourist dollars.
The money was supposed to go to government infrastructure--tax dollars help run governments.
Where did the hurricane victim's tax dollars go?
Was it to the repair of the levee or emergency evacuation plans?
I guess neither.
Volunteerism at its best...
• Louisiana residents who suffered losses from a natural disaster can claim a refund of state taxes paid.
http://www.bankrate.com/yho/itax/edit/state/profiles/state_tax_La.asp
http://www.rev.state.la.us/
It might help.
This morning, I heard one of the news commentators on Fox & Friends morning news show ask (hypothetically?) where are all of the Black rappers. Hers was the first face I saw upon awaking and I almost fell back on the pillow with laughter. I was so outdone.
She commented that since most of the victims are poor and black--and since that is mainly their audience--why don't they (step their game up) and help out with the disaster relief.
I will not issue an opinion on what this lady said. She has a right to her opinion as we all should have rights--in other words, I will hold my tongue on this one.
I just love it when we stop walking on eggshells.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
I'm Not Walking On Eggshells Anymore, Either!
Borrowing an old Isley song lyric, "...here we go again. Here we go again--I thought what we had was over..."
I just don't understand the outrage. It seems la haute societe and bourgeoisie are always outraged and surprized by the afflictions of the poor.
Except this time it is really horrifying.
It's real life.
Like yall didn't know folks could be poor down in the Bayou. (ain't no such thing as workin' roots either.)
Anyone following the Hurricane Katrina updates--please pay attention. These stories will
not be retold. If you are reading about the blind patients allegedly abandoned by staffers
at a residence for the blind read slowly because it won't get replayed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/national/nationalspecial/03hospitals.html?pagewanted=2
None of this type of tragedy is new, uncharted territory.
Understand that what you are watching is human nature, raw and uncensored. Self preservation. Looting.
Rioting. Prison escapees blending in with the others suffering in the flooded state of
Louisiana. (Is that story fit to print?)
It happens everyday in your city and you tune it out.
Rarely will it be reported truthfully.
Look, staffers caring for the blind have families and homes. And so do prison gaurds,
police, government officials, newspaper staffers, bank tellers and so forth.
The growing job sector in the service industry may lead some of the more unaware to belive
that they actually have handmaidens and butlers to be at their beck and call.
No such luck. These people have lives outside of serving you fries or handing you money.
I watched the news conference where the governor of Louisiana issued a mandatory evacuation order. Parents probably put their families and kids first.
Will I sit and continue to write knowing my child, elder parent, sick relative is somewhere helpless? I hope not. I'll leave work to care for my family. Will my employer understand?
Maybe. But all of Big Money's stuff is insured and after he has made sure to anchor his beloved yacht, he might call to find out if the business and its employees are okay.
People who knew got out early. People with money had another home to go to.
Then who was affected? (think about it)
The poor will always be with us but it doesn't give anyone the right to ignore the needs of another just because they can't or don't feel like facing the truth about where we live.
No one really cares about the helpless--like children and the elderly.
Those people were poor, hungry, undocumented, unloved and mistreated BEFORE that levee broke.
Do you follow me now?
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF A SOUND INFRASTRUCTURE. There are college grads
walking around unemployed right now who have the answers to problems that abound not only in LA but in
other situations as well. If they don't have the answers, they have enough brain power to figure it out.
But many of them have already given up and are unemployed or underemployed so some ingnorant goof can get a paycheck.
(What if you found out your doctor cheated his way through school and showed up at the office just for a paycheck?)
Sometimes, we have to do more than just our jobs.
And please understand Northerners--Southerners are different than us.
They have their own time
table on when projects should be completed, goals should be established and met or
developing ideas for the future. There is never a big rush but hey, it could have been the heat getting to them.
Stop following along blindly or working only to improve your bottom line. The poor and the Black are bound in one fight--equality.
Take about 45 minutes out of your day to think about that.
Hiring managers and human resource professionals: Start hiring people that can do things the right way and can actually do what needs to be done.
Without infrastructure, nothing in our world, North or South, will work properly.
Please look at the Hurricane Katrina aftermath as an example. Those people have been
working on that levee for more than 37 years, I read.
I have even read reports where funding on the ongoing levee work was cut to divert more money to the theater in Iraq.
When will we wake up? Maybe never. It's difficult living in the real world where people run off, saving themselves leaving the blind to drown.
It sure was funny when it happened on Seinfeld. (Remember what the character George Costanza did at his girlfriend's child's birthday party?)
Hee Hee. But then again, that's just good old-fashioned Jewish comedy. A play on human nature.
God knows if managers there had an emergency plan and or drills to prepare for flooding or violent weather.
Now, it looks like we've all abandoned each other.
So don't blame Kanye for what he said during the NBC telethon. Some of us never sleep.
http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/0605/news/west.html
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Kayne-West-Bush-Black-People.wmv
http://switchboard.real.com/player/email.html?PV=6.0.12&&title=Kayne-West-Bush-Black-People&link=http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Kayne-West-Bush-Black-People.wmv
Don't blame the President for Hurricane Katrina because he didn't cause the levee to break.
That state rakes in millions in tourist dollars.
Stand in the mirror and then blame the person you see staring back.
Have you really done all you've could to help, everyday, your fellow human?
No?
When was the last time you actually stood up for what was right?
Well, join the damn club. We ain't perfect by a long shot and some of us are just downright evil and practitioners of deceit, cutting our own nose to spite our face, lovers of favoritism and hate, etc.
If you fit into the above category, please change before many of us disenfranchised end up dying and going to hell--and then who will you have to hand you hot fries and coffee?
I just don't understand the outrage. It seems la haute societe and bourgeoisie are always outraged and surprized by the afflictions of the poor.
Except this time it is really horrifying.
It's real life.
Like yall didn't know folks could be poor down in the Bayou. (ain't no such thing as workin' roots either.)
Anyone following the Hurricane Katrina updates--please pay attention. These stories will
not be retold. If you are reading about the blind patients allegedly abandoned by staffers
at a residence for the blind read slowly because it won't get replayed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/national/nationalspecial/03hospitals.html?pagewanted=2
None of this type of tragedy is new, uncharted territory.
Understand that what you are watching is human nature, raw and uncensored. Self preservation. Looting.
Rioting. Prison escapees blending in with the others suffering in the flooded state of
Louisiana. (Is that story fit to print?)
It happens everyday in your city and you tune it out.
Rarely will it be reported truthfully.
Look, staffers caring for the blind have families and homes. And so do prison gaurds,
police, government officials, newspaper staffers, bank tellers and so forth.
The growing job sector in the service industry may lead some of the more unaware to belive
that they actually have handmaidens and butlers to be at their beck and call.
No such luck. These people have lives outside of serving you fries or handing you money.
I watched the news conference where the governor of Louisiana issued a mandatory evacuation order. Parents probably put their families and kids first.
Will I sit and continue to write knowing my child, elder parent, sick relative is somewhere helpless? I hope not. I'll leave work to care for my family. Will my employer understand?
Maybe. But all of Big Money's stuff is insured and after he has made sure to anchor his beloved yacht, he might call to find out if the business and its employees are okay.
People who knew got out early. People with money had another home to go to.
Then who was affected? (think about it)
The poor will always be with us but it doesn't give anyone the right to ignore the needs of another just because they can't or don't feel like facing the truth about where we live.
No one really cares about the helpless--like children and the elderly.
Those people were poor, hungry, undocumented, unloved and mistreated BEFORE that levee broke.
Do you follow me now?
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF A SOUND INFRASTRUCTURE. There are college grads
walking around unemployed right now who have the answers to problems that abound not only in LA but in
other situations as well. If they don't have the answers, they have enough brain power to figure it out.
But many of them have already given up and are unemployed or underemployed so some ingnorant goof can get a paycheck.
(What if you found out your doctor cheated his way through school and showed up at the office just for a paycheck?)
Sometimes, we have to do more than just our jobs.
And please understand Northerners--Southerners are different than us.
They have their own time
table on when projects should be completed, goals should be established and met or
developing ideas for the future. There is never a big rush but hey, it could have been the heat getting to them.
Stop following along blindly or working only to improve your bottom line. The poor and the Black are bound in one fight--equality.
Take about 45 minutes out of your day to think about that.
Hiring managers and human resource professionals: Start hiring people that can do things the right way and can actually do what needs to be done.
Without infrastructure, nothing in our world, North or South, will work properly.
Please look at the Hurricane Katrina aftermath as an example. Those people have been
working on that levee for more than 37 years, I read.
I have even read reports where funding on the ongoing levee work was cut to divert more money to the theater in Iraq.
When will we wake up? Maybe never. It's difficult living in the real world where people run off, saving themselves leaving the blind to drown.
It sure was funny when it happened on Seinfeld. (Remember what the character George Costanza did at his girlfriend's child's birthday party?)
Hee Hee. But then again, that's just good old-fashioned Jewish comedy. A play on human nature.
God knows if managers there had an emergency plan and or drills to prepare for flooding or violent weather.
Now, it looks like we've all abandoned each other.
So don't blame Kanye for what he said during the NBC telethon. Some of us never sleep.
http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/0605/news/west.html
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Kayne-West-Bush-Black-People.wmv
http://switchboard.real.com/player/email.html?PV=6.0.12&&title=Kayne-West-Bush-Black-People&link=http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Kayne-West-Bush-Black-People.wmv
Don't blame the President for Hurricane Katrina because he didn't cause the levee to break.
That state rakes in millions in tourist dollars.
Stand in the mirror and then blame the person you see staring back.
Have you really done all you've could to help, everyday, your fellow human?
No?
When was the last time you actually stood up for what was right?
Well, join the damn club. We ain't perfect by a long shot and some of us are just downright evil and practitioners of deceit, cutting our own nose to spite our face, lovers of favoritism and hate, etc.
If you fit into the above category, please change before many of us disenfranchised end up dying and going to hell--and then who will you have to hand you hot fries and coffee?
Thursday, August 11, 2005
CHICAGO DEFENDER PT. 2
COPYRIGHT 2005 Leslie Jones McCloud
During the middle of the Great Depression, the Chicago Defender and the
Black Press found
itself in trouble with the United States government for it‘s stance on
World War II and the
outcome of an editor's conference called by government officials in 1918.
Specifically, Chicago Defender founder Robert S. Abbott was called on the
carpet for his
news coverage of lynching in the South and North and his effort that
brought more than
50,000 Black Southerners to Chicago during the Great Migration.
Near the end of the 1930s, the Chicago Defender, needed new leadership.
Before his death
February 29, 1940, Abbott called on his nephew, John Sengstacke to run
the newspaper.
And he did so, although, reluctant.
"I wasn't too keen on it," he told John Taylor, a Chicago Defender
reporter in 1975.
Graduating in 1933 from Hampton University with a degree in Business
Administration,
Sengstacke went home to Savannah, Georgia instead of coming to Chicago
like Abbott had
wanted. Three months later he was in Chicago.
Upon arrival, he said he did everything from writing editorials to
running the presses.
In six month's time he asked Abbott for stock in the company because he
didn't' want a "long
legal hassle," he said.
But there were bigger concerns that needed his attention besides the
newspaper's growing
wealth and legacy.
Sengstacke had become alarmed by the growing threat of censorship.
by the United States government, who in turn, was serious about their
allegations of
treason against the newspaper.
Along with other African American newspapers, the Defender protested the
treatment of
African American servicemen fighting in World War II and urged the
integration of the armed
forces.
In 1942, J Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
provided Attorney
General Francis Biddle with lengthy reports on what he saw as seditious
activity by the
African American press.
It started innocently enough. A cafeteria worker named James Thompson,
wrote a letter to
the Pittsburgh Courier, troubled by the fact that he might be called upon
to defend a
nation in which he was treated like a second-class citizen.
He suggested that African Americans espouse a 'double V' campaign. The
symbol stood for
victory at war over enemies 'from without,' and victory at home against
the enemy of
prejudice 'from within.' When other readers wrote to congratulate
Thompson on his idea, the
Courier launched a huge publicity campaign, complete with lapel pins and
stickers, 'double
V' hair styles and songs.
The Chicago Defender picked up on the campaign.
It kept awareness of the injustices of segregation alive during the war.
It also brought
attention to Jim Crow-style segregation in the armed forces. The troops
themselves were
segregated, but black outfits were assigned white commanding officers.
Even the military's blood supply for the wounded was segregated by race.
White soldiers
brutalized black soldiers, and race riots took place in camps where
troops of both races
resided. The military tried to suppress word of these events, with
partial success; only
the black press reported discrimination and discord within the troops and
thusly, their
newspapers were banned from military grounds.
J. Edgar Hoover saw the double V campaign as an act of sedition. The
Chicago Defender had
once again, become the subject of a government investigation.
With President Franklin D. Roosevelt's approval, Hoover sought to indict
black publishers
for treason and shut down the Black Press.
May of 1942, Franklin Roosevelt told his Attorney General, Frances
Biddle, to instead, talk
to some of the black publishers and ask them to tone down what they were
writing--again.
Comments on this situation were discussed by Sengstacke, before his death
in 1997, with
Patrick Washburn. The film, The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, by
Stanley Nelson is
based the interview.
"June, mid-June, 1942, John Sengstacke, the publisher of The Chicago
Defender and -- and
the top publisher, if you want to call him that, of the black press,
walked in the room at
the Justice Department and Biddle was there to meet him. There were all
these papers, like
The Cleveland Call and Post laid out on the table, included his own. And,
he looks at these
newspapers. They're all playing up the fact the blacks and whites are
killing each other
off at these Army camps in the South. And, ah, Biddle says, "See these
newspapers? These
are hurting the war effort and if you don't stop writing this stuff,
we're gonna take some
black publishers to court under the Espionage Act," Washburn said.
"Well, Sengstacke, who is incredibly tough and was also a college
graduate, like Biddle,
although he didn't go to Harvard and Harvard Law School, says to, Biddle,
"Look, we've been
writing' this stuff since the 1820s, since black newspapers started in
this country, and we
don't intend to stop now. And if you don't like it, just take us to court
under the
Espionage Act." And you -- you've got to realize what an incredible thing
that is for
Sengstacke to say to Biddle because Biddle's the Attorney General of the
United States, the
top law officer. He clearly has the right to take 'em to court if he
wants to," Washburn
said.
"Ah, well,, over the next 45 minutes or an hour, the two men calmed down.
At the end of
that time, Biddle tells, Sengstacke, he says, "Look, we're not gonna take
you to court
under the Espionage Act, you or the other black publishers, if you don't
write anything
that's more critical than what you're writing right now on the federal
government. However,
I hope that you and the other black publishers will tone down what you're
writing." And he
also promised that he would get black reporters into these press
conferences of white
officials. That was another little kind of thing that happened," Washburn
said.
Sengstacke spread the word within the Black press about what happened at
the meeting.
Two years after assuming the role of publisher of the Defender,
Sengstacke, negotiated a
compromise with the Justice Department that protected the First Amendment
rights of the
African American press.
It was the first of many firsts for Sengstacke, according to Thomas
Picou, chairman of Real
Times, Inc., parent company of the Chicago Defender.
"John Sengstacke's was my uncle by marriage but also my guardian until
age 21," Picou said.
"He was chairman of a committee that desegregated the U.S Military as
part of the Committee
on Equality Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces.
"Through that, he developed a relationship with President Harry S.
Truman," he said.
He also founded the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association in 1940 and
helped Harry McAlpin
became the first African-American correspondent at the White House,
through the agreement
with the U.S. Justice Department. He arranged a meeting with the Brooklyn
Dodgers that
helped Jackie Robinson become the first MLB player, Picou said.
The Bud Billiken parade started in the 1920s by Abbott but
Sengstacke incorporated Defender Charities in 1945 to help support it,
along with
scholarships.
By 1956 the Chicago Defender began daily production, in time to chronicle
the events of the
Little Rock Nine, the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education school
desegregation case,
according to his son Robert "Bobby" Sengstacke, former photographer for
the Chicago
Defender. His photographs, many posted inside the newspaper, chronicled
Black Chicago
through to the Civil Rights Movement and the fruits of its success.
"He used the newspaper to go around the country helping to improve the
race, bit by bit.
He sent a team of reporters out of the Tri-State Defender in Memphis,
Tennessee to cover
the Little Rock Nine," he said.
Later, his father brought them to Chicago to make appearances.
"I don't know if they were here to raise funds or not. He put them up in
a downtown hotel
for several days. They were like any other kids. They didn't talk a lot
about it but they
all had to be gutsy to do what they did," Bobby Sengstacke said.
The 1960s found Sengstacke back to business as usual, serving the
community through
relevant news.
It also mean a more demanding schedule.
"There was so much responsibility with the paper but he found time to
come home. Sometimes
the press would break down and they would have problems getting the paper
out. My father
did a lot of great things but he wasn't easy to get along with because he
was very
headstrong," Bobby Sengstacke said.
But he always came out a winner, said Sengstacke, who is now the only
surviving son.” When
you are in charge, you want to make it successful so if people thought he
was a
dictator--we got paid and we made money," he said.
"You had to be persistent with him though. It was always about business,"
he said.
He was great friends with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said
Joslyn DiPasalegne,
Sengstacke family historian, granddaughter of John Sengstacke and Vice
President of Event
Marketing. He was heavily involved in the Civil Rights marches and
agenda.
"Whenever Martin Luther King was in Chicago, he saw John," she said.
Sengstacke mostly focused on improving the Defender during the 1970s.
He expanded it's circulation as far as O'Hare International Airport. It
had a daily
circulation of about 25,000, according to newspaper records. He
criticized area merchants
for not wanting to handle his product.
"Some distributors just don’t want us The same goes for some hotels but
there are a lot of
Blacks patronizing their places," he told one of his reporters during an
interview.
He hoped for improved race relations.
"It provably won't come during my lifetime but I hope some day we will
graduate from
tokenism to become full fledged members of the American scene," he said.
He said African-
Americans as a race had to "keep the pressure on."
He reflected that his father never really got to chose his career path.
He said his uncle
Abbott was sick and there was no one else at the time, qualified to run
the newspaper.
"I never got to ask him what he wanted to do with his life. Nobody knew.
After he started
the daily, he slowed down," Bobby Sengstacke said.
John Sengstacke started Amalgamated Publishing, an advertising company
but when he turned
the company over to new leadership, the business went down hill, Bobby
Sengstacke said.
In the 1990s, the Defender rolled along on its own strength. Back in the
1950s and 1960s 90
percent of the youth had a Defender. You could always find a party going
on. All of that
dropped off," he said.
Near the end of his father's life, he began raising money for Provident
Hospital.
Provident had been closed. He opened it so that poor Blacks didn't have
to go all of the
way to Cook County Hospital. He wanted to make sure people on the South
Side had health
care. He raised $55 million but it absorbed all of his time for 10
years," Bobby Sengstacke
said.
The paper ran into serious financial problems and John Sengstacke
returned his attention to
the newspaper. He was also fighting a lifelong battle with emphysema.
He was in his 80s. He went back to chain smoking and in about a year or
so after returning
to the newspaper. Soon after, he died," Bobby Sengstacke said.
John Sengstacke also owned the Courier newspapers of Pittsburgh and Miami
and the Chronicle
of Detroit.
Chicago Defender publication grew to become the largest African-American
daily in the
country.
Besides being directly involved in the desegregation of the U. S. armed
force, he also
worked closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create jobs in the
United States
Postal Service for African-Americans, according to the African American
Registry Web site.
He died May 28, 1997 of emphysema.
His brother Fred Sengstacke, who started out at the Defender in 1935 as a
janitor, took
over as publisher.
###
During the middle of the Great Depression, the Chicago Defender and the
Black Press found
itself in trouble with the United States government for it‘s stance on
World War II and the
outcome of an editor's conference called by government officials in 1918.
Specifically, Chicago Defender founder Robert S. Abbott was called on the
carpet for his
news coverage of lynching in the South and North and his effort that
brought more than
50,000 Black Southerners to Chicago during the Great Migration.
Near the end of the 1930s, the Chicago Defender, needed new leadership.
Before his death
February 29, 1940, Abbott called on his nephew, John Sengstacke to run
the newspaper.
And he did so, although, reluctant.
"I wasn't too keen on it," he told John Taylor, a Chicago Defender
reporter in 1975.
Graduating in 1933 from Hampton University with a degree in Business
Administration,
Sengstacke went home to Savannah, Georgia instead of coming to Chicago
like Abbott had
wanted. Three months later he was in Chicago.
Upon arrival, he said he did everything from writing editorials to
running the presses.
In six month's time he asked Abbott for stock in the company because he
didn't' want a "long
legal hassle," he said.
But there were bigger concerns that needed his attention besides the
newspaper's growing
wealth and legacy.
Sengstacke had become alarmed by the growing threat of censorship.
by the United States government, who in turn, was serious about their
allegations of
treason against the newspaper.
Along with other African American newspapers, the Defender protested the
treatment of
African American servicemen fighting in World War II and urged the
integration of the armed
forces.
In 1942, J Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
provided Attorney
General Francis Biddle with lengthy reports on what he saw as seditious
activity by the
African American press.
It started innocently enough. A cafeteria worker named James Thompson,
wrote a letter to
the Pittsburgh Courier, troubled by the fact that he might be called upon
to defend a
nation in which he was treated like a second-class citizen.
He suggested that African Americans espouse a 'double V' campaign. The
symbol stood for
victory at war over enemies 'from without,' and victory at home against
the enemy of
prejudice 'from within.' When other readers wrote to congratulate
Thompson on his idea, the
Courier launched a huge publicity campaign, complete with lapel pins and
stickers, 'double
V' hair styles and songs.
The Chicago Defender picked up on the campaign.
It kept awareness of the injustices of segregation alive during the war.
It also brought
attention to Jim Crow-style segregation in the armed forces. The troops
themselves were
segregated, but black outfits were assigned white commanding officers.
Even the military's blood supply for the wounded was segregated by race.
White soldiers
brutalized black soldiers, and race riots took place in camps where
troops of both races
resided. The military tried to suppress word of these events, with
partial success; only
the black press reported discrimination and discord within the troops and
thusly, their
newspapers were banned from military grounds.
J. Edgar Hoover saw the double V campaign as an act of sedition. The
Chicago Defender had
once again, become the subject of a government investigation.
With President Franklin D. Roosevelt's approval, Hoover sought to indict
black publishers
for treason and shut down the Black Press.
May of 1942, Franklin Roosevelt told his Attorney General, Frances
Biddle, to instead, talk
to some of the black publishers and ask them to tone down what they were
writing--again.
Comments on this situation were discussed by Sengstacke, before his death
in 1997, with
Patrick Washburn. The film, The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, by
Stanley Nelson is
based the interview.
"June, mid-June, 1942, John Sengstacke, the publisher of The Chicago
Defender and -- and
the top publisher, if you want to call him that, of the black press,
walked in the room at
the Justice Department and Biddle was there to meet him. There were all
these papers, like
The Cleveland Call and Post laid out on the table, included his own. And,
he looks at these
newspapers. They're all playing up the fact the blacks and whites are
killing each other
off at these Army camps in the South. And, ah, Biddle says, "See these
newspapers? These
are hurting the war effort and if you don't stop writing this stuff,
we're gonna take some
black publishers to court under the Espionage Act," Washburn said.
"Well, Sengstacke, who is incredibly tough and was also a college
graduate, like Biddle,
although he didn't go to Harvard and Harvard Law School, says to, Biddle,
"Look, we've been
writing' this stuff since the 1820s, since black newspapers started in
this country, and we
don't intend to stop now. And if you don't like it, just take us to court
under the
Espionage Act." And you -- you've got to realize what an incredible thing
that is for
Sengstacke to say to Biddle because Biddle's the Attorney General of the
United States, the
top law officer. He clearly has the right to take 'em to court if he
wants to," Washburn
said.
"Ah, well,, over the next 45 minutes or an hour, the two men calmed down.
At the end of
that time, Biddle tells, Sengstacke, he says, "Look, we're not gonna take
you to court
under the Espionage Act, you or the other black publishers, if you don't
write anything
that's more critical than what you're writing right now on the federal
government. However,
I hope that you and the other black publishers will tone down what you're
writing." And he
also promised that he would get black reporters into these press
conferences of white
officials. That was another little kind of thing that happened," Washburn
said.
Sengstacke spread the word within the Black press about what happened at
the meeting.
Two years after assuming the role of publisher of the Defender,
Sengstacke, negotiated a
compromise with the Justice Department that protected the First Amendment
rights of the
African American press.
It was the first of many firsts for Sengstacke, according to Thomas
Picou, chairman of Real
Times, Inc., parent company of the Chicago Defender.
"John Sengstacke's was my uncle by marriage but also my guardian until
age 21," Picou said.
"He was chairman of a committee that desegregated the U.S Military as
part of the Committee
on Equality Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces.
"Through that, he developed a relationship with President Harry S.
Truman," he said.
He also founded the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association in 1940 and
helped Harry McAlpin
became the first African-American correspondent at the White House,
through the agreement
with the U.S. Justice Department. He arranged a meeting with the Brooklyn
Dodgers that
helped Jackie Robinson become the first MLB player, Picou said.
The Bud Billiken parade started in the 1920s by Abbott but
Sengstacke incorporated Defender Charities in 1945 to help support it,
along with
scholarships.
By 1956 the Chicago Defender began daily production, in time to chronicle
the events of the
Little Rock Nine, the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education school
desegregation case,
according to his son Robert "Bobby" Sengstacke, former photographer for
the Chicago
Defender. His photographs, many posted inside the newspaper, chronicled
Black Chicago
through to the Civil Rights Movement and the fruits of its success.
"He used the newspaper to go around the country helping to improve the
race, bit by bit.
He sent a team of reporters out of the Tri-State Defender in Memphis,
Tennessee to cover
the Little Rock Nine," he said.
Later, his father brought them to Chicago to make appearances.
"I don't know if they were here to raise funds or not. He put them up in
a downtown hotel
for several days. They were like any other kids. They didn't talk a lot
about it but they
all had to be gutsy to do what they did," Bobby Sengstacke said.
The 1960s found Sengstacke back to business as usual, serving the
community through
relevant news.
It also mean a more demanding schedule.
"There was so much responsibility with the paper but he found time to
come home. Sometimes
the press would break down and they would have problems getting the paper
out. My father
did a lot of great things but he wasn't easy to get along with because he
was very
headstrong," Bobby Sengstacke said.
But he always came out a winner, said Sengstacke, who is now the only
surviving son.” When
you are in charge, you want to make it successful so if people thought he
was a
dictator--we got paid and we made money," he said.
"You had to be persistent with him though. It was always about business,"
he said.
He was great friends with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said
Joslyn DiPasalegne,
Sengstacke family historian, granddaughter of John Sengstacke and Vice
President of Event
Marketing. He was heavily involved in the Civil Rights marches and
agenda.
"Whenever Martin Luther King was in Chicago, he saw John," she said.
Sengstacke mostly focused on improving the Defender during the 1970s.
He expanded it's circulation as far as O'Hare International Airport. It
had a daily
circulation of about 25,000, according to newspaper records. He
criticized area merchants
for not wanting to handle his product.
"Some distributors just don’t want us The same goes for some hotels but
there are a lot of
Blacks patronizing their places," he told one of his reporters during an
interview.
He hoped for improved race relations.
"It provably won't come during my lifetime but I hope some day we will
graduate from
tokenism to become full fledged members of the American scene," he said.
He said African-
Americans as a race had to "keep the pressure on."
He reflected that his father never really got to chose his career path.
He said his uncle
Abbott was sick and there was no one else at the time, qualified to run
the newspaper.
"I never got to ask him what he wanted to do with his life. Nobody knew.
After he started
the daily, he slowed down," Bobby Sengstacke said.
John Sengstacke started Amalgamated Publishing, an advertising company
but when he turned
the company over to new leadership, the business went down hill, Bobby
Sengstacke said.
In the 1990s, the Defender rolled along on its own strength. Back in the
1950s and 1960s 90
percent of the youth had a Defender. You could always find a party going
on. All of that
dropped off," he said.
Near the end of his father's life, he began raising money for Provident
Hospital.
Provident had been closed. He opened it so that poor Blacks didn't have
to go all of the
way to Cook County Hospital. He wanted to make sure people on the South
Side had health
care. He raised $55 million but it absorbed all of his time for 10
years," Bobby Sengstacke
said.
The paper ran into serious financial problems and John Sengstacke
returned his attention to
the newspaper. He was also fighting a lifelong battle with emphysema.
He was in his 80s. He went back to chain smoking and in about a year or
so after returning
to the newspaper. Soon after, he died," Bobby Sengstacke said.
John Sengstacke also owned the Courier newspapers of Pittsburgh and Miami
and the Chronicle
of Detroit.
Chicago Defender publication grew to become the largest African-American
daily in the
country.
Besides being directly involved in the desegregation of the U. S. armed
force, he also
worked closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create jobs in the
United States
Postal Service for African-Americans, according to the African American
Registry Web site.
He died May 28, 1997 of emphysema.
His brother Fred Sengstacke, who started out at the Defender in 1935 as a
janitor, took
over as publisher.
###
CHICAGO DEFENDER PT. 1
Copyright Leslie Jones McCloud 2005
African-American lawyer and publisher, Robert Sengstacke Abbott
(1868-1940) founded the Chicago Defender on May 6, 1905.
He was born to former slaves Thomas and Flora Abbott in a cabin,
in Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia according to a
Philadelphia-based Mount Union College Web site on Abbott.
Soon Abbott's father died of tuberculosis and Flora remarried to
John Hermann Henry Sengstacke and it is here the legacy began.
Abbott's stepfather John, was a hardworking, well educated man.
John’s father, also John Hermann Henry Sengstacke, was a German
sea captain from Brehman, Germany who settled in Savannah Georgia
during the late 1830s, according to Joslyn DiPasalegne, Vice
President of Event Marketing, Sengstacke family historian and
Abbott’s great-niece.
"One day while surveying his new home, he went to the factors
walk--an area where warehouses and factories were in town. The
(sea captain) stared in horror. He had never seen a slave auction
before," she said.
He bought Tama to keep her from being humiliated. Shortly after
her purchase, he married her and they settled in Savannah. He
started a dry goods store in an area near factor's walk. They had
two children; John, Abbott’s stepfather and John's sister Mary
Flaurance.
Tama died shortly after giving birth to her daughter.
The German sea captain, not wanting his children to become slaves
if anything were to happen to him, sent them to Germany to be
raised by his sister, DiPasalegne said.
"The Civil War kept him from returning to see his children before
he died. After his death Abbott’s stepfather, John came to settle
the sea captain's estate. That is where he met Flora, Abbott’s
mother, who was a recent widow. Her husband Thomas, Abbott's
natural father, died of tuberculosis shortly after Abbott was
born. She was fighting her in-laws over the rights to her son,"
she said.
John Sengstacke married Flora and together they raised seven other
children.
Abbott’s stepfather, John became a Congregationalist minister, and
operated a school for black children said the Web site, African
American Registry.
He also operated the Woodville Times newspaper in their home state
of Georgia--the predecessor to the Chicago Defender those in the
Sengstacke family believe, DiPasalegne said.
Abbott was sent Claflin University and then studied the printing
trade at Hampton Institute from 1892 to 1896.
While there, he made a life changing discovery on a trip to
Chicago, singing with the Hampton choir, according to a film by
Stanley Nelson, The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords.
James Grossman, who is in the film, said Fredrick Douglass at the
age of 75 delivered a speech at the Columbian Exposition but was
heckled by a crowd of rowdy whites.
He made his speech anyway about how blacks serve great a purpose
in the world and Abbott was there watching and learning.
He said that Abbott was in Chicago for the first time and Ida B.
Wells had recently emerged as a major leader and voice within the
African American community. And all three of these people were
journalists.
Abbott went on to receive a law degree from Kent College of Law,
Chicago in 1898, but because of race prejudice in the United
States, he was unable to practice, in spite of attempts to
establish law offices in Gary, Indiana, Topeka, Kansas, and
Chicago, Illinois.
So he returned to his roots. His stepfather John, had a print shop
of his own.
Christopher Reed in the film, The Black Press: Soldiers without
Swords, said he believed Abbott's presence at the fair led him to
believe a change in American values could come through the
newspaper.
"Abbott invested the 25 cents he had in his pocket, his good
name and then borrowed money from a friend," DiPasalegne said. He
set his printing equipment in his landlady's dining room with a
folding card table and used a kitchen chair as his office.
On May 5, 1905, he started the Chicago Defender.
He sold three hundred copies of the four-page booklet by going
door to door, visiting every barber shop, poolroom, drugstore, and
church on the South Side of Chicago, writes Roi Ottley, author of
The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott.
Local news was the thrust of the Chicago Defender, as it is today.
Abbott started his earliest reporting by gathering tidbits around
his neighborhood.
His newspaper was penned "The World's Greatest Weekly" and
eventually made Abbott one of the first black self-made
millionaires through publishing. He worked for fifteen years to
make the newspaper successful, the African American Registry Web
site said.
He also immersed himself into the world of the Black Press.
Black Chicago got to see their world chronicled in print.
"Our news and neighborhoods were ignored. We didn't exist in the
other papers. We were neither born, we didn't get married, we
didn't die, we didn't fight in any wars, we never participated in
anything of a scientific achievement. We were truly invisible
unless we committed a crime. But in the Black Press, the Negro
press, we did get married. They showed us our babies being born.
They showed us graduating. They showed our PhDs,” Vernon Jarrett
said, in the film, Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords.
More than 500,000 Blacks migrated from the south to the north with
more than 50,000 settling in Chicago.
Abbott used The Defender to encourage migration to the North. He
would post job
notices and writings about better conditions in the North. He also
used red headlines to
speak his mind on each lynching that happened in the South in
hopes more Southern blacks
would relocate to the North.
He sent the Defender into the South. There, the Defender had a potential
black audience
nearly 200 times larger than
in Chicago, an audience that was hungry to hear what Abbott had to
say, film maker, Stanley Nelson said.
James Grossman of Nelson's film said the Chicago Defender was
blatant with the truth.
The Defender would say things like, "When the white fiends
come to the door, shoot them down. When the mob comes, take at
least one with you." Those
were things that if you were a black Southern newspaper, if you
were a newspaper editor in
Birmingham, Alabama, you can't say that because your newspaper's
going to get torched or
you're going to get run out of town.”
The nick name of public defender, still sticks in the minds
of those in the community who need help today.
Abbott’s editorial creed was to fight against "segregation,
discrimination and
disenfranchisement.
The Defender reached national prominence during World War I, when
the paper's banner headline for January 6, 1917, read
"Millions to Leave South." The Defender became the bible of many
seeking "The Promised
Land."
Abbott used the full resources of the paper -- articles,
editorials, cartoons, poems, and
even songs-- in a campaign to urge the Defender's readers to come
North. The paper even
printed train schedules, one-way to Chicago, Nelson said in his
film.
Abbott advertised Chicago so effectively that even migrants
heading for other
northern cities sought information and assistance from the pages
of the "Worlds Greatest
Weekly."
The Chicago Defender was a remarkably successful in encouraging
blacks to migrate from the
South to Chicago, often listing names of churches and other
organizations to whom they
could write for help, such as the Bethlehem Baptist Association in
Chicago, Illinois,
according to information from the Library of Congress.
Still, White southerners did not take the migration seriously.
“When the great migration really first began in the fall of 1916,
white
Southerners were sure that when blacks
went North, they would get cold. and they'd come back. That didn't
happen. Landlords and other employers began to realize that
their workers were
leaving so they began to try to stop people from leaving, which
meant trying to confiscate
The Chicago Defender. They would even have the police go up onto
railroad platforms and
arrest people for vagrancy,“ James Grossman said.
Nelson said with more than ten thousand black people leaving each
month, the South's economy
suffered and its leaders grew desperate. Some towns, ignoring the
Constitution, even banned
the sale of black papers to try to stem the tide of the migration.
In Somerville, Tennessee
a petition ordered that "no colored newspapers be circulated" and
that "every darkie must
read the local white paper." Abbott, asked for help from
the one group of African Americans who traveled freely through the
South--sleeping car porters.
“He hands them bundles of his newspapers, which they hide in the
train, and as these trains roll through the South,
instead of being put off at the stations like they used to be,
which are in the town limits
or the city limits, these porters would step out between cars or
at the back of the train,
toss 'em out in the countryside and suddenly all these Southern
cities found they couldn't
stop the black newspapers, no matter what they did, “ Patrick
Washburn said in Nelson’s film.
Thomas Picou, Sengstacke in-law and Chairman of Real Times, Inc. parent
company of the
Chicago Defender, said the train's path wound through New Orleans making
stops in Jackson
Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee then on to Chicago.
"It was called the chicken bone express because blacks
brought boxes of fried chicken with them. The train's dining car
was segregated," Picou said.
He said the people from the south also traveled through Indianapolis,
Detroit Michigan Cleveland Ohio to work in the steel mills,
automobile factories and stock yards.
As a result, thousands of prospective migrants got help with the
task of finding housing and employment.
During the years to come, Abbott was simply telling black folks
what to do when they made it north during the great migration.
Abbott, being a self made millionaire, cared about the social
graces of the new migrants and wanted them to fit into their community.
"Abbott himself was formal and reserved, writes Nelson.
“ He was 50 years old before he married. He
would allow neither his first nor his second wife to address him
as other than "Mr.
Abbott". He did not drink and avoided social activities. What he
enjoyed was the trappings
of wealth -- the gold- headed cane, the grand tours of Europe, and
even though he did not
drive, the Dusenberg convertible and Rolls-Royce limousine. Like
many in the black middle
class, Abbott was enamored of the social graces and attempted to
use the paper to teach
them to his readers. He even published a list of rules for
migrant's behavior. Such as:
"Don't promenade on the boulevards in your hog- killin' clothes."
"Don't clean your fingernails and pick your nose on the street."
"Don't flirt with the grocery, especially if your hair is still
chunky and full of bed
lint." " Nelson said.
The Chicago Defender and Mr. Abbott played a major role in
changing the face
the North. Using its pages, Mr. Abbott
was able to influence more than 50,000 African-Americans to leave
southern states and come to Chicago.
But like with all fast change comes conflict. There were riots and
allegations by the Unites States government of sedition during that time.
The Chicago Defender came under fire, starting with World War I.
Abbott was the first target of the intimidation effort on April 13, 1917,
only a week after
the United States entered WWI, according to information from Elliot
Parker of Central
Michigan University on the CataList Reference Web site.
Worried that repressed blacks would refuse to support World War I, the
War Department held
a conference with 31 of the nation's leading black editors in June of
1918.
The gathering was a seminal event in the relationship between the black
press and the U.S.
government in wartime. It led to President Woodrow Wilson making a
public denunciation of
lynching and commuting the sentences of 10 black soldiers who had been
sentenced to death for rioting," Parker wrote.
However, in 1919, race riots exploded across the United States and
hundreds
of people were killed. It became
known as "The Red Summer".
Grossman said a riot broke out during the summer in Chicago, July
of 1919.
In the end, more than 30 people died. Hundreds were injured and
The Chicago Defender ran a box score. At the top of the front page
it would keep track, day-by-day, of how many people on each side
had been killed.
The government's first attempt to solve the black press problem,
which it instituted more than a year before the editors conference,
involved intimidating editors, writes Parker, whose publications it
considered
inflammatory.
Members of the Black Press capitalized on white and black soldiers
fighting each other during both World Wars.
The Chicago Defender went so far as to send a reporter undercover
to a military camp to capture what was going on, Picou said.
During the First World War and the subsequent Red Scare years the
Justice Department and its Bureau of Investigation, the
intelligence branches of the Army and Navy, the State and Post
Office Departments, and other federal agencies engaged in
widespread investigation of anyone deemed politically suspect.
Black Americans were special targets because they were perceived
by some as particularly receptive to the radical ideas.
And, it wasn't a secret.
Theodore Kornweibel Jr., a Professor of
African American History in the Africana Studies Department at San
Diego State University, wrote about it in an article entitled
"The Most Dangerous of All Negro Journals": Federal Efforts to Suppress
the Chicago Defender During World War I."
Abbott, created the "Bud Billiken" picnic in the early 1920s to thank
the children who helped sell his newspapers. The picnic is held in
conjunction with the Bud Billiken Parade, the annual South Side
celebration named for a mythical, squat comic character that serves as a
mascot.
The parade, held in mid-August, honors black children on a route along
Martin Luther King Drive from 39th to 55th Streets. It is the nation's
largest African American parade, drawing thousands of spectators each
year.
The thousands who heeded Abbott's call to move North created new
urban communities and in city after city, other black newspapers
were established to serve them. Nearly 500 black newspapers were
in print by the early 1920s
Government estimates of the Defender's circulation soared tenfold, from
12,000 to 120,000,
between 1916 and 1918.
The government cited Abbott's efforts toward migration during the war and
because the
Defender became available nationwide.
But it wasn't just the circulation of the Defender and other black
newspapers that
concerned the government but the eloquence of the editors and their
ability to sway the
public, in the role of journalist.
The Justice Department issued a report on October, 1919, on the threat to
public order from
what it considered radical publications. The section on the black press,
"Radicalism and
Sedition Among the Negroes as Reflected in Their
Publications," mentioned how articulate many black editors were.
(The citation on the report's reference to the black press:
"Investigation Activities of
the Department of Justice," 66th Congress, 1st Session, Senate
Document XII.)
Other editors under fire included W. E. B.DuBois of the Crisis, J.H.
Murphy of
the Baltimore, Afro-American, J.E. Mitchell of the St. Louis Argus ,
Cyril Briggs
of the, Amsterdam News and A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen of the
Messenger.
The group of black editors signed a resolution that asked for black
loyalty towards the
country and a belief that the Germans needed to be defeated. In return,
they asked for
President Woodrow Wilson was asked to create a federal law against
lynching but he
only denounced
it. There were slight improvements for black soldiers and officers
because of the
conference but overall, Parker writes, the conference failed to produce
concrete civil
rights results but it had an important psychological impact on the
editors and the militancy would continue during World War II.
As a result, soldiers' reading was curtailed.
"The Army said, "We don't think this is good. You can't read it."
On a number of bases you had papers that were taken away from
newsboys, black newspapers. You had paper burnings, Patrick
Washburn, who appeared in the film, The Black Press: Soldiers
Without Swords said.
Along with other African American newspapers, the Defender
protested the treatment of African American servicemen fighting in
World War II and urged the integration of the armed forces.
As a result of their protests, the U.S. government threatened to
indict African American publishers for sedition and treason, again.
But Abbott's health was in decline.
His 25th anniversary message to the public outlined what Abbott intended
to do when he started the newspaper.
"Before I started on my life's work--journalism, I was counseled by my
beloved father that a good newspaper was one of the best instruments of
service and one of the strongest weapon ever used in the defense of
race." Abbott said.
Abbott began a new magazine from October 1930 to September 1933
entitled Abbott's Monthly. Later the name was changed to Abbott’s
Weekly and Illustrated News. Inside were stories written by new
writers such as Richard Wright and Chester Himes. Abbott also
accepted submissions from Cook County, Illinois judges, like
Circuit Court Judge Joseph Burke. He wrote a piece called "Divorce,
the Great American Pastime," according to the cover of the
magazine, found on the Galactic Central Publications Web site.
Seven years later, Abbott died at the age of 70.
He died of Bright's disease, an inflammation of the kidneys, on
February 29, 1940.
By then, he had become the father of three newspapers; The Chicago
Defender, The Louisville Defender, and the Michigan Chronicle in Detroit.
However, he did
not have any children, so he left his business with his nephew, John H.
Sengstacke.
And just in time, because by 1942, near the end of World War II, there
were new charges of sedation against the Chicago Defender and John
Sengstacke would find himself following in his uncle's footsteps.
###
African-American lawyer and publisher, Robert Sengstacke Abbott
(1868-1940) founded the Chicago Defender on May 6, 1905.
He was born to former slaves Thomas and Flora Abbott in a cabin,
in Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia according to a
Philadelphia-based Mount Union College Web site on Abbott.
Soon Abbott's father died of tuberculosis and Flora remarried to
John Hermann Henry Sengstacke and it is here the legacy began.
Abbott's stepfather John, was a hardworking, well educated man.
John’s father, also John Hermann Henry Sengstacke, was a German
sea captain from Brehman, Germany who settled in Savannah Georgia
during the late 1830s, according to Joslyn DiPasalegne, Vice
President of Event Marketing, Sengstacke family historian and
Abbott’s great-niece.
"One day while surveying his new home, he went to the factors
walk--an area where warehouses and factories were in town. The
(sea captain) stared in horror. He had never seen a slave auction
before," she said.
He bought Tama to keep her from being humiliated. Shortly after
her purchase, he married her and they settled in Savannah. He
started a dry goods store in an area near factor's walk. They had
two children; John, Abbott’s stepfather and John's sister Mary
Flaurance.
Tama died shortly after giving birth to her daughter.
The German sea captain, not wanting his children to become slaves
if anything were to happen to him, sent them to Germany to be
raised by his sister, DiPasalegne said.
"The Civil War kept him from returning to see his children before
he died. After his death Abbott’s stepfather, John came to settle
the sea captain's estate. That is where he met Flora, Abbott’s
mother, who was a recent widow. Her husband Thomas, Abbott's
natural father, died of tuberculosis shortly after Abbott was
born. She was fighting her in-laws over the rights to her son,"
she said.
John Sengstacke married Flora and together they raised seven other
children.
Abbott’s stepfather, John became a Congregationalist minister, and
operated a school for black children said the Web site, African
American Registry.
He also operated the Woodville Times newspaper in their home state
of Georgia--the predecessor to the Chicago Defender those in the
Sengstacke family believe, DiPasalegne said.
Abbott was sent Claflin University and then studied the printing
trade at Hampton Institute from 1892 to 1896.
While there, he made a life changing discovery on a trip to
Chicago, singing with the Hampton choir, according to a film by
Stanley Nelson, The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords.
James Grossman, who is in the film, said Fredrick Douglass at the
age of 75 delivered a speech at the Columbian Exposition but was
heckled by a crowd of rowdy whites.
He made his speech anyway about how blacks serve great a purpose
in the world and Abbott was there watching and learning.
He said that Abbott was in Chicago for the first time and Ida B.
Wells had recently emerged as a major leader and voice within the
African American community. And all three of these people were
journalists.
Abbott went on to receive a law degree from Kent College of Law,
Chicago in 1898, but because of race prejudice in the United
States, he was unable to practice, in spite of attempts to
establish law offices in Gary, Indiana, Topeka, Kansas, and
Chicago, Illinois.
So he returned to his roots. His stepfather John, had a print shop
of his own.
Christopher Reed in the film, The Black Press: Soldiers without
Swords, said he believed Abbott's presence at the fair led him to
believe a change in American values could come through the
newspaper.
"Abbott invested the 25 cents he had in his pocket, his good
name and then borrowed money from a friend," DiPasalegne said. He
set his printing equipment in his landlady's dining room with a
folding card table and used a kitchen chair as his office.
On May 5, 1905, he started the Chicago Defender.
He sold three hundred copies of the four-page booklet by going
door to door, visiting every barber shop, poolroom, drugstore, and
church on the South Side of Chicago, writes Roi Ottley, author of
The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott.
Local news was the thrust of the Chicago Defender, as it is today.
Abbott started his earliest reporting by gathering tidbits around
his neighborhood.
His newspaper was penned "The World's Greatest Weekly" and
eventually made Abbott one of the first black self-made
millionaires through publishing. He worked for fifteen years to
make the newspaper successful, the African American Registry Web
site said.
He also immersed himself into the world of the Black Press.
Black Chicago got to see their world chronicled in print.
"Our news and neighborhoods were ignored. We didn't exist in the
other papers. We were neither born, we didn't get married, we
didn't die, we didn't fight in any wars, we never participated in
anything of a scientific achievement. We were truly invisible
unless we committed a crime. But in the Black Press, the Negro
press, we did get married. They showed us our babies being born.
They showed us graduating. They showed our PhDs,” Vernon Jarrett
said, in the film, Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords.
More than 500,000 Blacks migrated from the south to the north with
more than 50,000 settling in Chicago.
Abbott used The Defender to encourage migration to the North. He
would post job
notices and writings about better conditions in the North. He also
used red headlines to
speak his mind on each lynching that happened in the South in
hopes more Southern blacks
would relocate to the North.
He sent the Defender into the South. There, the Defender had a potential
black audience
nearly 200 times larger than
in Chicago, an audience that was hungry to hear what Abbott had to
say, film maker, Stanley Nelson said.
James Grossman of Nelson's film said the Chicago Defender was
blatant with the truth.
The Defender would say things like, "When the white fiends
come to the door, shoot them down. When the mob comes, take at
least one with you." Those
were things that if you were a black Southern newspaper, if you
were a newspaper editor in
Birmingham, Alabama, you can't say that because your newspaper's
going to get torched or
you're going to get run out of town.”
The nick name of public defender, still sticks in the minds
of those in the community who need help today.
Abbott’s editorial creed was to fight against "segregation,
discrimination and
disenfranchisement.
The Defender reached national prominence during World War I, when
the paper's banner headline for January 6, 1917, read
"Millions to Leave South." The Defender became the bible of many
seeking "The Promised
Land."
Abbott used the full resources of the paper -- articles,
editorials, cartoons, poems, and
even songs-- in a campaign to urge the Defender's readers to come
North. The paper even
printed train schedules, one-way to Chicago, Nelson said in his
film.
Abbott advertised Chicago so effectively that even migrants
heading for other
northern cities sought information and assistance from the pages
of the "Worlds Greatest
Weekly."
The Chicago Defender was a remarkably successful in encouraging
blacks to migrate from the
South to Chicago, often listing names of churches and other
organizations to whom they
could write for help, such as the Bethlehem Baptist Association in
Chicago, Illinois,
according to information from the Library of Congress.
Still, White southerners did not take the migration seriously.
“When the great migration really first began in the fall of 1916,
white
Southerners were sure that when blacks
went North, they would get cold. and they'd come back. That didn't
happen. Landlords and other employers began to realize that
their workers were
leaving so they began to try to stop people from leaving, which
meant trying to confiscate
The Chicago Defender. They would even have the police go up onto
railroad platforms and
arrest people for vagrancy,“ James Grossman said.
Nelson said with more than ten thousand black people leaving each
month, the South's economy
suffered and its leaders grew desperate. Some towns, ignoring the
Constitution, even banned
the sale of black papers to try to stem the tide of the migration.
In Somerville, Tennessee
a petition ordered that "no colored newspapers be circulated" and
that "every darkie must
read the local white paper." Abbott, asked for help from
the one group of African Americans who traveled freely through the
South--sleeping car porters.
“He hands them bundles of his newspapers, which they hide in the
train, and as these trains roll through the South,
instead of being put off at the stations like they used to be,
which are in the town limits
or the city limits, these porters would step out between cars or
at the back of the train,
toss 'em out in the countryside and suddenly all these Southern
cities found they couldn't
stop the black newspapers, no matter what they did, “ Patrick
Washburn said in Nelson’s film.
Thomas Picou, Sengstacke in-law and Chairman of Real Times, Inc. parent
company of the
Chicago Defender, said the train's path wound through New Orleans making
stops in Jackson
Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee then on to Chicago.
"It was called the chicken bone express because blacks
brought boxes of fried chicken with them. The train's dining car
was segregated," Picou said.
He said the people from the south also traveled through Indianapolis,
Detroit Michigan Cleveland Ohio to work in the steel mills,
automobile factories and stock yards.
As a result, thousands of prospective migrants got help with the
task of finding housing and employment.
During the years to come, Abbott was simply telling black folks
what to do when they made it north during the great migration.
Abbott, being a self made millionaire, cared about the social
graces of the new migrants and wanted them to fit into their community.
"Abbott himself was formal and reserved, writes Nelson.
“ He was 50 years old before he married. He
would allow neither his first nor his second wife to address him
as other than "Mr.
Abbott". He did not drink and avoided social activities. What he
enjoyed was the trappings
of wealth -- the gold- headed cane, the grand tours of Europe, and
even though he did not
drive, the Dusenberg convertible and Rolls-Royce limousine. Like
many in the black middle
class, Abbott was enamored of the social graces and attempted to
use the paper to teach
them to his readers. He even published a list of rules for
migrant's behavior. Such as:
"Don't promenade on the boulevards in your hog- killin' clothes."
"Don't clean your fingernails and pick your nose on the street."
"Don't flirt with the grocery, especially if your hair is still
chunky and full of bed
lint." " Nelson said.
The Chicago Defender and Mr. Abbott played a major role in
changing the face
the North. Using its pages, Mr. Abbott
was able to influence more than 50,000 African-Americans to leave
southern states and come to Chicago.
But like with all fast change comes conflict. There were riots and
allegations by the Unites States government of sedition during that time.
The Chicago Defender came under fire, starting with World War I.
Abbott was the first target of the intimidation effort on April 13, 1917,
only a week after
the United States entered WWI, according to information from Elliot
Parker of Central
Michigan University on the CataList Reference Web site.
Worried that repressed blacks would refuse to support World War I, the
War Department held
a conference with 31 of the nation's leading black editors in June of
1918.
The gathering was a seminal event in the relationship between the black
press and the U.S.
government in wartime. It led to President Woodrow Wilson making a
public denunciation of
lynching and commuting the sentences of 10 black soldiers who had been
sentenced to death for rioting," Parker wrote.
However, in 1919, race riots exploded across the United States and
hundreds
of people were killed. It became
known as "The Red Summer".
Grossman said a riot broke out during the summer in Chicago, July
of 1919.
In the end, more than 30 people died. Hundreds were injured and
The Chicago Defender ran a box score. At the top of the front page
it would keep track, day-by-day, of how many people on each side
had been killed.
The government's first attempt to solve the black press problem,
which it instituted more than a year before the editors conference,
involved intimidating editors, writes Parker, whose publications it
considered
inflammatory.
Members of the Black Press capitalized on white and black soldiers
fighting each other during both World Wars.
The Chicago Defender went so far as to send a reporter undercover
to a military camp to capture what was going on, Picou said.
During the First World War and the subsequent Red Scare years the
Justice Department and its Bureau of Investigation, the
intelligence branches of the Army and Navy, the State and Post
Office Departments, and other federal agencies engaged in
widespread investigation of anyone deemed politically suspect.
Black Americans were special targets because they were perceived
by some as particularly receptive to the radical ideas.
And, it wasn't a secret.
Theodore Kornweibel Jr., a Professor of
African American History in the Africana Studies Department at San
Diego State University, wrote about it in an article entitled
"The Most Dangerous of All Negro Journals": Federal Efforts to Suppress
the Chicago Defender During World War I."
Abbott, created the "Bud Billiken" picnic in the early 1920s to thank
the children who helped sell his newspapers. The picnic is held in
conjunction with the Bud Billiken Parade, the annual South Side
celebration named for a mythical, squat comic character that serves as a
mascot.
The parade, held in mid-August, honors black children on a route along
Martin Luther King Drive from 39th to 55th Streets. It is the nation's
largest African American parade, drawing thousands of spectators each
year.
The thousands who heeded Abbott's call to move North created new
urban communities and in city after city, other black newspapers
were established to serve them. Nearly 500 black newspapers were
in print by the early 1920s
Government estimates of the Defender's circulation soared tenfold, from
12,000 to 120,000,
between 1916 and 1918.
The government cited Abbott's efforts toward migration during the war and
because the
Defender became available nationwide.
But it wasn't just the circulation of the Defender and other black
newspapers that
concerned the government but the eloquence of the editors and their
ability to sway the
public, in the role of journalist.
The Justice Department issued a report on October, 1919, on the threat to
public order from
what it considered radical publications. The section on the black press,
"Radicalism and
Sedition Among the Negroes as Reflected in Their
Publications," mentioned how articulate many black editors were.
(The citation on the report's reference to the black press:
"Investigation Activities of
the Department of Justice," 66th Congress, 1st Session, Senate
Document XII.)
Other editors under fire included W. E. B.DuBois of the Crisis, J.H.
Murphy of
the Baltimore, Afro-American, J.E. Mitchell of the St. Louis Argus ,
Cyril Briggs
of the, Amsterdam News and A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen of the
Messenger.
The group of black editors signed a resolution that asked for black
loyalty towards the
country and a belief that the Germans needed to be defeated. In return,
they asked for
President Woodrow Wilson was asked to create a federal law against
lynching but he
only denounced
it. There were slight improvements for black soldiers and officers
because of the
conference but overall, Parker writes, the conference failed to produce
concrete civil
rights results but it had an important psychological impact on the
editors and the militancy would continue during World War II.
As a result, soldiers' reading was curtailed.
"The Army said, "We don't think this is good. You can't read it."
On a number of bases you had papers that were taken away from
newsboys, black newspapers. You had paper burnings, Patrick
Washburn, who appeared in the film, The Black Press: Soldiers
Without Swords said.
Along with other African American newspapers, the Defender
protested the treatment of African American servicemen fighting in
World War II and urged the integration of the armed forces.
As a result of their protests, the U.S. government threatened to
indict African American publishers for sedition and treason, again.
But Abbott's health was in decline.
His 25th anniversary message to the public outlined what Abbott intended
to do when he started the newspaper.
"Before I started on my life's work--journalism, I was counseled by my
beloved father that a good newspaper was one of the best instruments of
service and one of the strongest weapon ever used in the defense of
race." Abbott said.
Abbott began a new magazine from October 1930 to September 1933
entitled Abbott's Monthly. Later the name was changed to Abbott’s
Weekly and Illustrated News. Inside were stories written by new
writers such as Richard Wright and Chester Himes. Abbott also
accepted submissions from Cook County, Illinois judges, like
Circuit Court Judge Joseph Burke. He wrote a piece called "Divorce,
the Great American Pastime," according to the cover of the
magazine, found on the Galactic Central Publications Web site.
Seven years later, Abbott died at the age of 70.
He died of Bright's disease, an inflammation of the kidneys, on
February 29, 1940.
By then, he had become the father of three newspapers; The Chicago
Defender, The Louisville Defender, and the Michigan Chronicle in Detroit.
However, he did
not have any children, so he left his business with his nephew, John H.
Sengstacke.
And just in time, because by 1942, near the end of World War II, there
were new charges of sedation against the Chicago Defender and John
Sengstacke would find himself following in his uncle's footsteps.
###
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Help for the Addicted
Copyright Leslie Jones McCloud 2005
08-03-05
An act of defiance 20 years ago saved Juan Deas from a life of misery. He diagnosed
himself as an alcoholic at the age of 14.
"I felt early on I would be an active alcoholic for the rest of my life," he said.
Eventually, his family slipped away and a chance after high school to attend college.
He methodically recounted his history of being addicted, as if he was discussing his own
case history with colleges at a staff meeting.
He remembered how many times he went to dry out at a men's mission before being confronted by a counselor for fighting, then getting put out of the program. He hit a wall with drinking at his next treatment program where his problems continued.
"She was screaming at me. The director told me I would never amount to anything," he said.
He entered a 30-day program to prove her wrong.
Now at the age of 46, he is Program Director at Discovery House in Pennsylvania and has
been counseling others on the jagged path of addiction for 16 years. He has earned a
certification in addictions counseling and a master's degree in health science. Deas was on
hand Wednesday for an open house at the local Discovery House located on Cleveland Street.
Richard Heidenreich, the program director at that location, said Discovery House is a
national methadone maintenance treatment program for those who are addicted to
opiates. They have 13 clinics in five states.
He said that their clients are people who are addicted to painkillers like oxycodone HCl
controlled-release (Oxycontin), hydrocodone (Vicodin), codeine (Tylenol-3), heroin, morphine
or any other opiate. They are one of the few outpatient clinics who enroll teenage
clients.
"We offer methadone maintenance and counseling services. For those persons in the program
that need to be stepped down off of methadone gradually, we offer medically supervised
withdrawal," he said.
Mark Besden, a Discovery House program director in Hatboro, Penn., said Oxycontin is the
drug most patients use because it is more powerful than Vicodin.
"Doctors don't like to give pain medication to methadone users," Robin Schulte, a LPN at
the local Discovery House said, and it becomes an issue in pain management.
Methadone, like the drugs it combats, is an opiate too and the clinics often carry a bad
image because of it.
"People are so ashamed to say they come to a clinic," Schulte said.
She said county police officers sit in the parking lot on Cleveland Street and GRIT
officers use the huge space as a staging area. It houses commercial property where a beauty
shop, barber shop, tax accountant and a flea market call home.
Discovery House patients can be detoxed off of illegal drugs in about 30 days. The
average length of time on methadone varies from 12 to 18 months.
Discovery House plans to offer in the next year, buprenorphine (Suboxone) treatment where
patients would come to clinic less frequently.
Including Heidenreich, there are three counselors who provide services to 120 patients for
$63 per week who live in the surrounding areas. The clinic can comfortable service 350.
There weren't any who signed up for services Wednesday during the open house. He hopes that
will change in the coming days.
"They're lives are out-of-control because of usage. We are starting to see more and more
teens as heroin addiction takes off. The family dynamics are askew or there might be a
predisposition to use. The key element is the environment at home, he said.
###
08-03-05
An act of defiance 20 years ago saved Juan Deas from a life of misery. He diagnosed
himself as an alcoholic at the age of 14.
"I felt early on I would be an active alcoholic for the rest of my life," he said.
Eventually, his family slipped away and a chance after high school to attend college.
He methodically recounted his history of being addicted, as if he was discussing his own
case history with colleges at a staff meeting.
He remembered how many times he went to dry out at a men's mission before being confronted by a counselor for fighting, then getting put out of the program. He hit a wall with drinking at his next treatment program where his problems continued.
"She was screaming at me. The director told me I would never amount to anything," he said.
He entered a 30-day program to prove her wrong.
Now at the age of 46, he is Program Director at Discovery House in Pennsylvania and has
been counseling others on the jagged path of addiction for 16 years. He has earned a
certification in addictions counseling and a master's degree in health science. Deas was on
hand Wednesday for an open house at the local Discovery House located on Cleveland Street.
Richard Heidenreich, the program director at that location, said Discovery House is a
national methadone maintenance treatment program for those who are addicted to
opiates. They have 13 clinics in five states.
He said that their clients are people who are addicted to painkillers like oxycodone HCl
controlled-release (Oxycontin), hydrocodone (Vicodin), codeine (Tylenol-3), heroin, morphine
or any other opiate. They are one of the few outpatient clinics who enroll teenage
clients.
"We offer methadone maintenance and counseling services. For those persons in the program
that need to be stepped down off of methadone gradually, we offer medically supervised
withdrawal," he said.
Mark Besden, a Discovery House program director in Hatboro, Penn., said Oxycontin is the
drug most patients use because it is more powerful than Vicodin.
"Doctors don't like to give pain medication to methadone users," Robin Schulte, a LPN at
the local Discovery House said, and it becomes an issue in pain management.
Methadone, like the drugs it combats, is an opiate too and the clinics often carry a bad
image because of it.
"People are so ashamed to say they come to a clinic," Schulte said.
She said county police officers sit in the parking lot on Cleveland Street and GRIT
officers use the huge space as a staging area. It houses commercial property where a beauty
shop, barber shop, tax accountant and a flea market call home.
Discovery House patients can be detoxed off of illegal drugs in about 30 days. The
average length of time on methadone varies from 12 to 18 months.
Discovery House plans to offer in the next year, buprenorphine (Suboxone) treatment where
patients would come to clinic less frequently.
Including Heidenreich, there are three counselors who provide services to 120 patients for
$63 per week who live in the surrounding areas. The clinic can comfortable service 350.
There weren't any who signed up for services Wednesday during the open house. He hopes that
will change in the coming days.
"They're lives are out-of-control because of usage. We are starting to see more and more
teens as heroin addiction takes off. The family dynamics are askew or there might be a
predisposition to use. The key element is the environment at home, he said.
###
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
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