Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Defender in May 1905, and by the outbreak of the First World War it had become the most widely-read African American newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago.
When Abbott died in 1940, his nephew John Sengstacke became editor and publisher of the Defender, which began publishing on a daily basis in 1956. Full text of this newspaper is available in both the Black Studies Center and ProQuest Historical Newspapers databases.