Volume 19, 2, Spring 2003
During the "Great Migration," which began in 1915 and lasted for almost fifty years, about five million African-Americans from the South migrated to the northern industrialized cites of the United States.[1] Historian John Hope Franklin states that although the main cause of the exodus was economic, there were also important social considerations as well:
The severe labor depression in the South in 1914 and 1915 sent wages down to 75 cents per day and less. The damage of the boll weevil to cotton crops in 1915 and 1916 discouraged many who were dependent on cotton for their subsistence. Floods in the summer of 1915 left thousands of blacks destitute and homeless and read to accept almost anything in preference to the uncertainty of life in the South. . . .Injustice in the Southern courts, the lack of privileges, disfranchisement, segregation, and lynching served as important stimuli for blacks to move out of the South.[2]
In addition, a steep decline in foreign immigration from more than 1 million in 1914 to slightly more than 300,000 in 1915 sent labor agents to the South to find blacks and whites willing to move to the North for employment.[3]
During this period, the black press vigorously prevailed upon southern blacks to leave behind their second-class status in the South for the promise of better living conditions and opportunities in northern cities. The chief proponent of the migration was the publisher of the Chicago Defender , Robert S. Abbott. Abbott, a son of former slaves, began the Defender in 1905 with a purpose he revealed in the slogan he adopted: "American race prejudice must be destroyed!"[4] In the pages of the Defender Abbott "coaxed and challenged, denounced and applauded -- until finally he decided to launch a full-blown campaign he called 'The Great Northern Drive.'"[5] According to Armistead Pride and Clint Wilson,
The Great Northern Drive came like manna from heaven for the poverty-stricken, hopelessly constricted Blacks of the southern backcountry. Abbott offered help in finding homes and jobs for the untutored migrants. His newspaper counseled them in the ways of a northern city and in responsible citizenship. . . . The paper published their letters, news, and verse and answered their questions. It stood up for them when employment officers put their job applications aside for uncommonly long periods of time. The Defender [became] advocate, defender, instructor, and an anchor in a strange world.[6]
But before the Defender could gain any influence in the South, Abbott had to find a way to solve the paradox of addressing Southern blacks, many of whom 1.) could not subscribe to the paper to receive it and 2.) could not read. He did this by developing a widespread network consisting of community leaders in the South, who served as local correspondents and sellers, and people who were able to read who then read issues aloud to others.[7] Another part of the network that enabled wide circulation of the paper was a result of Abbott's "astute cultivation of black railroad men during the newspaper's struggling early years."[8] In addition, black entertainers the paper reported on extensively volunteered to serve as the Defender's traveling salespeople.[9] Because of these efforts, the Defender's circulation increased from around 50,000 at the time of its inception to 120,000 in 1918, then to an estimated 230,000 in 1920.[10] Others have suggested that the paper's readership at its peak reached almost 600,000 people weekly from 1917-1919. [11] More than a few southern whites read the paper as well.[12]
Mary Stovall states that the Defender's prestige and large circulation was the result of its success in "affirming black life by reporting significant activities, praising black success, and defining worthwhile goals for the community."[13] In doing so, the paper created for African-American readers in the South and elsewhere a "racial consciousness" -- an awareness of the possibilities for what life for black Americans could be -- and a "psychological reality" -- the accompanying belief that life was better in the North.[14] Nowhere are these ideas more apparent than on the paper's editorial pages. An examination of editorials published in the Defender from the migration years 1916 to 1919 reveals how Abbott used irony, a discrepancy between what is said or experienced and what is known, to create an editorial voice that enabled him to connect with Southern readers looking to improve their living situations. This paper will examine nine editorials that are representative of those published in the Defender that addressed issues and incidents in the South.
The Great Migration has been the subject of a number of pieces of scholarly literature. Recent articles on the subject tend to focus on specific aspects of the migration. For example, Boyd focuses on religious developments .[15] Tolnay and Beck examine racial violence in the South as a cause of black migration and come with what some would consider obvious findings.[16] A 1983 article by Marks examines the Defender as part of a network of communications that aided in the recruitment of blacks to work in northern factories.[17] However, recent scholarly works that deal primarily with the role of Abbott and the Defender in the Great Migration are comparatively few and none focus exclusively on editorials or rhetoric in the paper.[18] The ones that do often focus on the effect that the paper had on its southern readers, such as Grossman's Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration .[19] Stovall, states that "the so-called 'Great Migration' of southern blacks to Chicago during and after World War I was credited I large measure to the Defender's invitation to come north to jobs and decent conditions."[20] In another article, Grossman also states "As self-designated booster of the exodus, the Chicago Defender [sic] helped to shaper the character, magnitude and direction of the movement."[21] Stroman adds that "The Defender's involvement in the migration illustrates one role of function that the black press has performed in black history."[22]
However, in his biography of Abbott, Roi Ottley writes that the editorials in the Defender "manifestly had decisive effect":
Everywhere in the rural South the paper was greeted as a "herald of glad tidings." The movement consequently spread like a contagion. Rumors and gossip added volume and enthusiasm to the exodus, which was kept at fever pitch when the migrants wrote back home to friends and relatives. The stimuli of suggestion and hysteria almost gave the migration the significance of a religious pilgrimage. Soon standards, songs and watchwords were introduced, and people declared they were "Bound for the Promised Land." Abbott, quickly recognizing this development, characterized the migration as "The Flight Out of Egypt," and the migrants sang they were "Going into Canaan."[23]
An article that focuses on the study of editorials in black newspapers is Ula Taylor's analysis of the writings of Amy Jaques-Garvey, wife of Marcus Garvey, the leader of the largest organized mass movement in black history and head of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and sometime rival of Abbott.[24]
History should be studied because it is necessary to individuals and to society to understand how people and societies behave. Studying history enables us to understand how societies change. History helps us to comprehend the factors that cause change. And it helps us understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change. This study of the Chicago Defender contributes to an aspect of the study of the history of the black press in America, which, in turn, contributes to the study of the history of blacks in America. The study of African-American history is itself important because it is a discovery of the lives of a people who have had to cope with a unique set of circumstances in America. It is also a study of change. The Great Migration resulted in major changes in American society and culture, and the Defender was at the center of it. Exploring such aspects of history helps provide a more complete picture of African-American life, and, in turn, a fuller picture of American life.
Yet other than DeSantis' study of the American-Dream Myth, the rhetorical strategies Abbott used in the paper have not been subjected to close examination.[25] However, doing so is important because an examination of Abbott's life leads to the conclusion that as a trained journalist and would-be lawyer, he understood the power of the skillful use of irony that would enable him to write editorials that would "lead, guide, persuade, incite, and inspire" as a "Race" man.[26]
The editorials from 1916-1919 that will be examined are ones that directly address issues or events regarding the South. Making editorials the focus of study makes sense because they are the texts that Abbott was responsible for writing them. So, in a sense, we get a glimpse of his thinking about the racial issues of the time. The years 1916-1919 are used as a point of study because 1916 is when the first editorial directly appealing to southern blacks to come north appeared, and 1919 is the year of "The Red Summer" race riots that took place in cities across the country.[27] The objective here is to provide an overview that will illuminate how the use of one aspect of language in the Defender's editorials contributed to what was, ultimately, a social movement.
According to M. H. Abrams the most definitions of the word "irony" have at their core "the root sense of dissembling, or of a difference between what is asserted and what is actually the case."[28] Additionally, the use of ironic language "presupposes an ironic situation either in the context at hand or, more generally, in the human condition at large."[29] Such was the case for blacks the North and the South who read editorials in the Defender . Northern readers of the paper were treated to articles that detailed the acts of violence and oppression that happened to blacks in the South in a nation that purported to espouse principles of freedom. Southern black readers, of course, lived with the paradox every day. Thus, Abbott is able to effectively in employ irony -- in the form of sarcasm -- when he speaks about the South. An example of this is in an editorial from the August 26, 1916 edition of the Defender , titled "The Committee Acts," which contained the following paragraph:
In the recent lynching at Stuttgart, Ark., the "best citizens" who took part in this gala (?) [sic] affair were a little peeved at the newspaper accounts of the affair and deemed it wise, for the sake of their honor, to send the following letter that they might be set right in the eyes of the public.[30]
He used the body of the editorial to present the letter, which he allowed to make his argument:
"We, members of the committee who hanged the Negro rapist, have, after listening to the false stories about the affair, concluded that it is due the public that they be made acquainted with the true facts; "The criminal was taken from the jail at DeWitt, brought to the scene of execution and hanged in as humane a manner as possible. Quite recently a man was hanged in England for high treason. He suffered the tortures of strangulation for the period of nine minutes before being pronounced dead by the attending physicians. We give you OUR WORD that the criminal WE lynched did not live nine seconds after his feet left the ground as the shot wounds on his body prove. The only request made by the criminal was that he be hanged or shot and NOT TORTURED OR BURNED. For obvious reasons we must withhold our names, and beg to sign ourselves, yours for the proper, and unfailing enforcement of the law. The Committee."[31]
Abbott used the letter from the "Committee" to allow the group to "speak for itself." Doing so allowed him emphasize the irony of the situation in which a group who has executed a man without due process feels the need to uphold its honor.
Quoting from letters or commentary in Southern newspapers to make a point was a rhetorical strategy Abbott used often in Defender editorials. An example appears in an editorial titled "Getting the South Told." Before he quoted from a letter that appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune written by W. J. White, a black man, Abbott opened with this bit of ironic commentary:
BELOW THE MASON AND DIXON LINE the people seem to sleep a little more soundly over every issue of national importance than do the people of the East, North or West. In the matter of migration, only now after nearly a quarter of a million dark people have left their section, do they wake up to the enormity of their loss, and perhaps another half century will roll around before they will discover that the fault lies with them.[32]
In support of the editorial's opening paragraph, White's letter discussed the reasons that blacks were leaving the South, reasons which were seemingly obvious to all except Southern whites:
"The unbiased observer has not long to search nor far to seek to find the real reason for the exodus of Negroes from the South. Isolated, ostracized, humiliated, proscribed, discriminated against, practically outlawed, the patience which made him a type as a slave has become a mockery with him as a freedman. He is the negative force in every equation. His work, be he skilled, has to be accepted with the scant and sarcastic ecomium [sic] that it is well done, 'for a negro.' His ability in other lines is discounted on the ground that in whatever measure it may exist, his white blood is responsible."[33]
The letter continued with White explaining other indignities suffered by blacks and concluded by stating that although there is racism in the north, the possibility still existed there for blacks to "work out [their] destiny. . . with his fellow man to appreciate [their] merits."[34] Again, allowing the letter writer to speak for himself and, as a result, to readers, enhanced Abbott's ironic use of language in the introduction. This allowed readers to identify with White -- as victims of oppression -- and Abbott -- as people mocking the pettiness and dehumanizing elements of that oppression -- and "get the South told." In the conclusion, the editorial suggests that, "A few more articles as forcefully written as this one of Mr. White's and freely copied by the solid South press might set the people in that neck of the woods to thinking -- if such a thing is possible -- along lines that would tend for the betterment of conditions among the darker citizens."[35]
A week later, in an editorial titled "A Demoralizing Element," Abbott takes aim at John R. Taylor, the editor of The Lafourche Comet , who, in an editorial titled "Becoming a Nuisance" wrote,
If something is not done soon to clean our principal streets of the little Negroes that are getting to be a regular pest [sic] there'll be some dead "niggers" lying around and no one will know who is guilty. It is well for President Wilson to preach against lynch law, but things sometimes get to such a point that it requires drastic measures to reestablish decency . . . . Some of the Negro men are to blame. . . as they are beginning to talk about what will happen when the Negro soldiers get back from the war. They are crazy and don't know it, for when the negro soldiers get back the white soldiers will be here also, and it will be a sad thing for the Negroes to try to stir up trouble with the view, as some say, of "getting even." The way they were laying around the streets of this town dead in 1887 won't be a circumstance to what will be seen when the negroes get back and"start something."[36]
In the Defender's editorial response, Abbott focuses on a particularly ironic aspect:
The above editorial is from a paper which is presumed to reflect the spirit of the community in which it is published. This presumption is based upon the fact that a community, like an individual, cannot rise above its environments [sic]. If such was possible, the editorial would be impossible because the editor would be impossible. . . . The editorial speaks for itself. No other evidence is needed to justify the decision that this particular "stick whittler" who has been fortunate enough to acquire a printing press has neither the ability to write an editorial nor the inclination to deal fairly with the subject matter when that subject matter happens to refer to our people.
To further underscore the irony of the situation, Abbott describes another news item that arrived at the Defender's office the same time as Taylor's "scurrilous attack and prediction": A statement from President Woodrow Wilson stating why he commuted the sentences of ten black soldiers who had participated in an August 1917 riot in Houston.[37] The Defender remarks that "At the very moment that the [president] of this country was striving to breathe into the very life of the nation itself the spirit of peace and good will among all classes of its citizenry, . . . this 'hill billy' editor from the swamps of Louisiana was exerting his every effort to disturb the peaceful equilibrium of those who are endeavoring to make the world safe for democracy."[38] The editorial calls for the Department of Justice to investigate Taylor for sedition and suggests that "such an application will be made by law abiding [sic] citizens," presumably by Abbott himself. This statement is significant beyond its ironic connotations. For a black southern reader in 1917, the implication that a black man might ask the government to investigate a white man for treason would only serve to reinforce that notion of the North as a place where a black person could find justice.
Another source that was frequently the target of ironic commentary in Defender editorials was the desire of Southerners to keep black workers from migrating. A rhetorical strategy that he used often to highlight the South's complaints was the use of a folk saying or homily as the source of the theme of his editorial. "Our Part in the Exodus," an editorial from March 17, 1917, provides an example. The purpose of the editorial is to remind blacks in the North about their obligations to help the new arrivals. "The south has constantly complained of the load they were carrying," it begins, "and complained so long and loud that the north began to sympathize with them. Their every shortcoming was laid at the black man's door. He was the stone around the white man's neck that kept him and his section of the country one hundred years behind the times."[39] But now that the mass migration of workers had begun, the region had begun to complain for a different reason. But as far as the Defender was concerned, it was too late, a point he emphasizes by quoting an old saying:
"You never miss the water till the well runs dry," is applicable in this particular instance. The south thought they had a problem with the Negro, but their real problem will come when the Negro has gone, for there is no southern industry without the Negro. It is not the worthless class who have left their homes for newer and greener fields. It is the toilers, the men who till the soil, the men who operate the coal mines, the men who care for the cotton and sugar cane crops, the men who have families and mean something to a community.[40]
But the irony of situation is stated in the next sentence. While the real South's problem has yet to occur, the problem for "those who have been long established in the north" has begun; the arrival of the newcomers is not the problem, it's "caring for the stranger within their gates" that has become the problem. The Defender warns its readers "We are our brother's keeper whether we like it or not. . . . the church cannot and should not be expected to carry the burden alone; every club, lodge, society and individual must put their shoulder to the wheel and bring order out of chaos."[41] The paper reminds its readers that in order to not be like the South, it must treat the new arrivals with the kind of compassion they did not receive there.
"It seems to be inborn in most people to say 'I told you so," begins "Sympathy," an August 8, 1917, editorial.[42] "Such satisfaction is apparently derived from this outburst that it seems a pity to hold it back." Here, the Defender targets those the southern papers who "stormed and fumed and prophesized all kinds of dire things" when migration to the North began and issued "I told you so's" in the form of editorials after rioting occurred in East St. Louis.[43] But the editorial counters their arguments with this ironic reminder:
When it is remembered that the cry of the south has ever been "the Negro is as a yoke about our neck," and now when that yoke is gradually being lifted, the cry is "It is our yoke, let it alone," the situation becomes ludicrous. Ordinarily one feels relieved when they have gotten ride of objectional [sic] things or beings -- a case of good riddance to bad rubbage [sic]. But, of course, we are not all built alike, and here we find a class of people who hate another class so much they resort to the law to keep them always with them. We must be a wonderful people to have so much fuss made about us constantly, and yet we do not care to be in the limelight. We are modest and retiring, craving only to be let alone, but fate seems to have decreed otherwise.[44]
The editorial argues that even though a few of people who have migrated have not found success, and there are a few who have caused trouble, "all of the people are not narrow enough to believe these characters represent the entire race, as the south would infer."[45] His final comment on the absurdity of a people who engage in mob violence and try to seek sympathy for their "burden" is this: "Their 'I told you so's' fall on deaf ears. If they are looking for sympathy it cannot be found in this direction."[46] The Southern victimizer will not be allowed to play victim in the pages of the Defender .
A pair of 1918 editorials finds Abbott commenting on the situational irony South's attempt to lure back its black citizens. In the January editorial "Coaxing vs. Bulldozing," he again uses truisms to comment upon an absurdity. He opens the introduction to the editorial with the following lines:
"Molasses will attract more flies than vinegar." A simple truth, yet apparently difficult for some people to learn. The labor of the south has been driven to other sections because the sweets of life were never tendered to offset the constant diet of sours. Now, when it is almost too late, an effort is being made to spread some of the sweets in the hope, if not bringing back those who have wandered away, of retaining those who are still on the ground. It is not that they harbor any more love for us individually or collectively, but their pocketbooks are being affected, and the almighty dollar that is their master bids them try coaxing, now that bulldozing is no longer effective.[47]
The editorial describes a commission created by the governor of Missouri to study ways to retain blacks workers in the state, to which the Defender replies, "'Very good, Eddie,' as far as it goes, but would it not be in keeping to form another commission . . . with the one sole purpose in view of giving the Black man justice in its fullest sense? The white man needs instruction in good citizenship far more than we need it."[48] Missouri's feeble attempt to improve living conditions for blacks provides an example that illustrates the editorial's opening homily. The editorial ends with the following lines: "Some of us may drift back south but not to linger, unless conditions improve wonderfully. 'Don't Let the Same Bee Sting You Twice' is the title of an old song. Them's our sentiments." The expectation is that, unlike Southerners, readers of the Defender , will find such sentiments -- simple truths -- easy to learn.[49]
A 1919 editorial addressing the South, published three months before the "Red Summer" riot, contains some of the Defender's strongest rhetoric and finds the newspaper using irony to illustrate the reasons that blacks have -- and should -- leave the South. Abbott does this by pointing out the paradoxes in the treatment of blacks. For instance, in the editorial "Breaking Bread," examines the "riddles everywhere apparent in the South awaiting explanations that are never forthcoming."[50] Among these are the following:
WE ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH to eat in southern cafes and dining rooms, yet we prepare and serve 90 per cent of all southerners eat. We cannot meet them on a social basis, yet thousands of them were nursed from the breast of a black woman. Intermarriage is frowned upon, and in many states strictly forbidden, yet the South is full of mulattoes. "Grandfather" clauses and other devices are used to deprive us at the ballot, yet we are counted in the matter of representation in Washington, and the tax collector fails to overlook us on account of color. Individually, we are liked by one or more whites, collectively we are despised, feared and cordially hated. We are placarded dumb and ignorant, but capture first place in educational contests at every seat of learning where we are given an opportunity, in spite of the fact that our school facilities are limited.[51]
The Defender uses these paradoxes to call into question white peoples' claims of a civilized society: "Have barbarians of old perpetrated more horrible comes than those laid at the door of the 'prominent citizens' of today who engage in America's patented pastime, lynching bees?"[52] The South -- and to some extent, the nation -- is so full of contradictions that "Like the dog in the manger, he can't eat the hay, and won't let the cow have it."[53] However, the editorial itself presents a contradiction in its conclusion. In some of its most strident editorial language, the Defender states, "SO IT WILL BE SEEN the problem resolves itself into the question of what to do with the prejudiced white man, and this question can only be solved in a permanent, satisfactory manner . . . . It has been fully demonstrated that no amount of reasoning can change them . . . . So there remains nothing but brute force to meet brute force."[54] But the final lines of the editorial are a call for "those who put country before self" to "break bread with us if for nothing more than self-preservation" in order to stand against the "class of people who did their utmost to wreck the government a little over a half century ago."[55] The Defender takes a stance that is more militant than usual, calling for blacks to take a more assertive role in gaining their rights.
The May 17, 1919, editorial "They Want Us Back Home" covers the covers a familiar theme: the desire of Southerners to have blacks return to the region. In a less militant -- but no less ironic -- tone, the Defender , again describes the conditions, as they exist in the South: "ARE WE GOING? Let's what the other side of the balance holds. Segregation, 'Jim Crow' laws, Ku-Klux Clans [sic], lynchers and wreckers of womanhood . . . . One can scarcely pick up a daily paper without reading of some dastardly exhibition of savagery on the part of the lawless white element in the South." In its conclusion, the editorial takes a firm stand: "We will not willingly, however, go back to conditions that have become. . . unbearable."[56]
"Seeking the Cause," and editorial published just over two weeks after the July 27, 1919, Chicago riot, chastises those who sought the cause of the riot by looking solely at the incident said to have started it, the "regrettable affair at the bathing beach."[57] The editorial maintains that a combination of economic and social tensions contributed to the event and says that people looking for the cause of the riot should look at the causes of World War I: "Is it not conceded that for years Germany, France, England, Russia and Japan had axes to grind, that they cherished little love for each other . . . that territorial aggrandizement, trade monopoly and other vital questions were gnawing at their very heart strings? Had a friendly feeling existed would not the killing of . . . the members of the royal family been amicably adjusted without further bloodshed?"[58] The irony in this editorial comes not in the use of language. It stems from the fact that Abbott seems to ignore the Defender's -- and, as a result, his -- role in exacerbating the tensions that played a part in the conflict, by stimulating the influx of Southern blacks who were crowded into overcrowded, segregated housing districts. Instead, he resorts to the oft-used theme of Southern contradictions. Perhaps this is because he did not view the riot as a terrible event; he hoped that it would force the city to examine the abuses that blacks had suffered in the city.[59]
Use of irony as a rhetorical device in editorials is not new. Irony, in the form of sarcasm, is among the writing techniques the Pulitzer Prize committee looks for when making awards for the best editorials.[60] What, then, is the ultimate effect Abbott achieved using irony in Defender editorials? How did it help the paper become, as Carl Sandburg maintained, the "chief single promotional agency" for the Great Migration?[61] In their psycholinguistic study of the effects of irony, Gibbs and O'Brien conclude that people most often find ironic statements especially sarcastic when the statements cause them to remember earlier statements or commonly held beliefs or attitudes.[62] This use of irony is apparent in the editorials discussed and can be seen as part of a strategy for change on the part of the Defender as a survival strategy and a way for an oppressed people to make sense of the absurdities and contradictions inherent in their subordinate position in society. In turn, by using irony in the editorials to attack racist attitudes directly, Abbott allowed exploited blacks who read the paper to participate in making fun of the attitudes and beliefs that were used to subjugate them and may have compelled many of them to make changes in their lives by moving to the "Promised land."
Whether it was because of the use of irony or not, the Defender editorials had to have played a part in establishing Abbott's rhetorical vision of the North as a "Promised Land."[63] This is evidenced by the fact that soon after the Great Migration began, "standards, songs and watchwords were introduced and people declared that they were 'Bound for the Promised Land."[64] The "standards, songs, and watchwords" are all types symbolic cues that lead to what Ernest Bormann calls "symbolic convergence" -- the sharing of fantasies, or shared symbolic experiences -- among members of a small group -- readers of the Defender .[65] In addition, these symbolic experiences were promulgated throughout the larger black culture through a "communications network that shaped and facilitated the Great Migration as a social movement," a communications network at heart of which stood the Defender and its correspondents, sales agents, readers and clandestine and overt distributors.[66] This highly theoretical terrain would require a more exhaustive study of the themes, issues, and structure of the paper's editorials than is the province of this paper.
It must be noted, however, that the editorials alone were not the sole source of the dissemination of Abbott's rhetorical vision. By portraying life in the North as exciting -- with its night life, cultural amenities, better educational opportunities -- and contrasting it with life in the South and its lynchings and constant persecution, by providing advertisements for jobs, and by reporting stories about black achievements, Abbott used the entire newspaper to develop his rhetorical vision of the "Promised Land." Future rhetorical studies or text analyses -- of letters to the editor, for example -- can provide further insights into the effects of the use of language.
[1] Alferdteen Harrison and Blyden Jackson, Black Exodus : The Great Migration from the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991) preface. Return
[2] John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom : A History of African Americans , 8th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) 375-76. Return
[3] Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom 76. Return
[4] Roi Ottley, The Lonely Warrior; the Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott (Chicago,: H. Regnery Co., 1955) 7. Return
[5] Ottley, Lonely Warrior 160. Return
[6] Armistead Scott Pride and Clint C. Wilson, A History of the Black Press , Moorland-Spingarn Series (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997) 136-37. Return
[7] James R. Grossman, Land of Hope : Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) 78. Return
[8] Grossman, Land of Hope . The Defender ran a railroad column as early as 1910 that showed who worked the lines and presented stories about the workers. The paper also supported the Pullman porters during their fight for higher wages, which resulted in a 10 percent raise in 1916: James R. Grossman, "Blowing the Trumpet: The Chicago Defender and Black Migration During World War I," Illinois Historical Journal 78.2 (1985): 86. Return
[9] Grossman, Land of Hope 78-79. Return
[10] Carolyn A. Stroman, "The Chicago Defender and the Mass Migration of Blacks, 1916-1918," The Journal of Popular Culture 15.1 (1981). Return
[11] This is based on black press historian Frederick Detweiler's speculation that each issue of the paper was passed around to at least five people. Mary E. Stovall, "The Chicago Defender in the Progressive Era," Illinois Historical Journal 83.3 (1990): 160. Return
[12] Mistreatment of black citizens in the South was frequently the subject of news stories in the Defender. Likewise, the paper was frequently mentioned as a source of problems in white southern newspapers. The paper was ordered confiscated, and those caught selling it or other black newspapers were punished. Grossman, Land of Hope 44. Return
[13] Stovall, "Progressive Era," 160. Return
[14] Stovall, "Progressive Era." Return
[15] Boyd discusses the concept of "ethnic niches," occupations or industries into which an ethnic minority group concentrates in order to ameliorate its disadvantages in the larger economy. Such niches depend on the special consumer demands of members of the ethnic group. He postulates that during the Great Migration, African Americans from the rural South brought a need for traditional, emotional, and intimate religious services to the urban North. As a result, a niche arose for those African Americans who were willing and able to start churches able to meet black southern immigrants' religious demands. Though Boyd does not mention it in his paper, it could be said that the Defender -- and the black press in general -- are examples of such niches. R. L. Boyd, "The Storefront Church Ministry in African American Communities of the Urban North During the Great Migration: The Making of an Ethnic Niche," Social Science Journal 35.3 (1998). Return
[16] Their study used county-level data for ten southern states, as well as a new inventory of Southern lynchings, and found that during 1910- 1920 and 1920-1930, out-migration of blacks was heaviest from counties where more lynchings had occurred, and, in turn, counties that witnessed relatively more out-migration of blacks experienced fewer lynchings of blacks. In addition, they conclude "Southern whites in some communities may also have responded to black out-migration and the loss of cheap labor by improving living conditions for co-resident blacks" though not quickly enough to stem the tide of migration. Stewart E. and E. M. Beck Tolnay, "Racial Violence and Black Migration in the American South, 1910-1930," American Sociological Review 57.1 (1992). Return
[17] Marks' study concludes that there were four interconnected lines of communication that contributed to blacks leaving the South from 1916- 1918: labor agents, family and friends who had gone north and sent back correspondence, service organizations such as the Urban League, who helped the immigrants adapt to life in their new home; and ethnic presses. These lines of communication occur in stages and have happened in both internal and international migrations. C. Marks, "Lines of Communication, Recruitment Mechanisms, and the Great Migration of 1916-1918," Social Problems 31.1 (1983). Return
[18] Alan D. DeSantis discusses how Abbott used editorials in conjunction with other content in the Defender that connected to the American- Dream Myth to persuade blacks to move from the South: A. D. DeSantis, "Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners: The Chicago Defender and the Great Migration of 1915- 1919," Western Journal of Communication 62.4 (1998). Charles Simmons' book about the black press has a chapter that discusses the newspaper's contribution to the Great Migration: Charles A. Simmons, The African American Press : A History of News Coverage During National Crises, with Special Reference to Four Black Newspapers, 1827-1965 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1998). And Allan Spear discusses the Defender's part in the Great Migration as he explores the history of blacks in Chicago during a crucial thirty-year period when a relatively fluid pattern of race relations gave way to a rigid system of segregation and discrimination: Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago; The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago,: University of Chicago Press, 1967). Return
[19] Grossman writes, "To those who believed only what they saw in print, northern black newspapers -- especially the Chicago Defender -- provided glowing images of the North alongside lurid reports of Southern oppression." Grossman, Land of Hope . Return
[20] Stovall, "Progressive Era," 180. Return
[21] Grossman, "Blowing the Trumpet," 82. Return
[22] Stroman, "The Chicago Defender and the Mass Migration of Blacks, 1916-1918," 62. Return
[23] Ottley, Lonely Warrior 163. Return Return
[24] Taylor's article analyzes editorials that Jacques-Garvey wrote for UNIA's newspaper, the Negro World, in order to show how she exemplifies the concept of "community feminism," in which a woman's activism is focused both on helping both the men and women in their lives in addition to being an integral part of the activities in the communities to which they belong. Ula Y Taylor, "'Negro Women Are Great Thinkers as Well as Doers': Amy Jacques-Garvey and Community Feminism in the United States, 1924-1927," Journal of Women's History 12.2 (2000). Return
[25] DeSantis, "Selling the American-Dream Myth." Return
[26] M. Lyle Spencer, Editorial Writing; Ethics, Policy, Practice (Boston, New York, etc: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924) 19. Ottley writes that editor J. Hockley Smiley used the word "Race" in the Defender to refer to African-Americans to satisfy Abbott's dislike of the term "Negro." Ottley, Lonely Warrior 106. Return
[27] Ottley, Lonely Warrior 160. The phrase "The Red Summer" was coined by poet James Weldon Johnson. Return
[28] M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms , 4th ed. (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1981) 89. Return
[29] R. W. Gibbs and J. O'Brien, "Psychological- Aspects of Irony Understanding," Journal of Pragmatics 16.6 (1991): 524. Return
[30] "The Committee Acts," Chicago Defender 21 September 1916: Editorial. Return
[31] "The Committee Acts." Return
[32] "Getting the South Told," Chicago Defender 25 November 1916: Editorial. To "get someone told" means to tell them off. Return
[33] "Getting the South Told." Return
[34] "Getting the South Told." Return
[35] "Getting the South Told." Return
[36] "A Demoralizing Element," Chicago Defender 14 September 1918: Editiorial. Taylor ends the editorial by reminding "a few foolish white people who give Negroes improper advice" that whites who helped blacks in 1887 (presumably during a riot) were "tarred and feathered. . . and requested to leave" and have not returned. Return
[37] On August 23, 1917, a riot erupted in Houston after two police officers arrested a black soldier for interfering with their arrest of a black woman. When Charles Baltimore, one of the twelve black military policemen with the battalion, inquired about the soldier's arrest, words were exchanged and the policeman hit Baltimore over the head. The soldiers fled. The police fired at Baltimore three times, chased him into an unoccupied house, and took him to police headquarters. Though he was later released, a rumor quickly spread to camp that he had been shot and killed. A group of soldiers decided to march on the police station and secure his release. During this process, a soldier suddenly screamed that a white mob was approaching the camp. Black soldiers grabbed rifles and began firing in the direction of supposed mob. Sergeant Vida Henry led over 100 armed black soldiers toward downtown Houston. In their two-hour march on the city, the soldiers killed fifteen whites, including four policemen, and seriously wounded twelve others. Four black soldiers also died. After two hours, Henry advised the men to slip back into camp in the darkness and committed suicide. Between November 1, 1917, and March 26, 1918, the army held three separate courts- martial in the chapel at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The military tribunals indicted 118 enlisted men for participating in the riot, and found 110 guilty. Nineteen black soldiers were hanged and sixty-three received life sentences in federal prison. One was judged incompetent to stand trial. Two white officers faced courts-martial, but they were released. No white civilians were brought to trial. Texas State Historical Association, The Handbook of Texas Online , 23 July 2001, website, The General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association, Available: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/HH/jch4.html, 30 April 2002. Return
[38] "A Demoralizing Element." Return
[39] "Our Part in the Exodus," Chicago Defender 17 March 1917: Editorial. Return
[40] "Our Part in the Exodus." Return
[41] "Our Part in the Exodus." Return
[42] "Sympathy," Chicago Defender 25 August 1917: Editorial. Return
[43] "Sympathy." In the summer of 1917, 50 people died in the East St. Louis riot. Spear, Black Chicago; the Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 202. Return
[44] "Sympathy." Return
[45] "Sympathy." Return
[46] "Sympathy." Return
[47] "Coaxing Vs. Bulldozing," Chicago Defender 26 January 1918: Editorial. Return
[48] "Coaxing Vs. Bulldozing." Governor Frederick Dozier Gardner formed the Negro Industrial Commission for the purpose of "the general welfare of those living within the state; better education; the retention of farm laborers; the study of the moral and social obligations of citizenship." Return
[49] "Coaxing Vs. Bulldozing." Return
[50] "Breaking Bread," Chicago Defender 19 April 1919: Editorial. The Defender is inconsistent in its use of capitalization for the region name throughout the editorials examined. Return
[51] "Breaking Bread." Return
[52] "Breaking Bread." Return
[53] "Breaking Bread." Return
[54] "Breaking Bread." Return
[55] "Breaking Bread." Return
[56] "They Want Us 'Back Home'," Chicago Defender 17 May 1919: Editorial. Return
[57] "Seeking the Cause," Chicago Defender 9 August 1919: Editorial. The "affair" began after white bathers began throwing rocks at a young black swimmer who had enter into an area frequented by whites. Blacks who were outraged by their actions began retaliating, leading to a clash which ultimately escalated into a riot that ultimately involved ten thousand people and continued twelve days and nights with national repercussions. Ottley, Lonely Warrior 173-74. Return
[58] "Seeking the Cause." Return
[59] Ottley, Lonely Warrior 174. Return
[60] W. David Sloan and Laird B. Anderson, Pulitzer Prize Editorials: America's Best Editorial Writing, 1917-1993 , 2nd ed. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994) xxi. The other techniques are "linkage to a clear news peg, argumentation, analysis, interpretation, levity, description, brevity, narration, common sense, metaphor, and symbolism." Return
[61] Ottley, Lonely Warrior 162.Return
[62] Gibbs and O'Brien, "Psychological-Aspects of Irony Understanding," 530.Return
[63] According to Ernest Bormann, a "rhetorical vision" is "a unified putting-together of the various scripts which gives . . . a broader view of things." Ernest G. Bormann, The Force of Fantasy: Restoring the American Dream (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001) 8.Return
[64] Ottley, Lonely Warrior 163.Return
[65] Bormann, Force of Fantasy 6.Return
[66] Grossman, Land of Hope 88.Return