Sengstacke, John Herman Henry

Impact on the world

Groomed from boyhood by his uncle to succeed him, Sengstacke took over the Chicago Defender chain upon Abbott’s 1940 death and, in that same period, organized roughly 20 Black newspaper publishers into what became the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), now representing more than 200 Black-owned papers; he served as its first president. He expanded his holdings into a multi-city chain including the Michigan Chronicle and the Tri-State Defender, converted the flagship Defender to daily publication in 1956, and purchased the financially troubled Pittsburgh Courier in 1966, relaunching it as the New Pittsburgh Courier. Sengstacke also worked directly with President Franklin Roosevelt to secure Black reporters’ admission to White House press conferences and served on President Truman’s 1948 commission that recommended desegregating the U.S. armed forces, work recognized posthumously in 2000 with the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Life & background

Born November 25, 1912, in Savannah, Georgia, to a line of Congregationalist ministers, Sengstacke was educated at his uncle’s expense at Hampton Institute, graduating in 1934, and worked summers at the Defender before becoming vice president and general manager of the Robert S. Abbott Publishing Company in 1936. He took control of the Defender upon Abbott’s 1940 death, weathering a dispute with Abbott’s widow over the company, and led the growing Sengstacke Newspapers chain for 57 years, including three terms as NNPA president; he died in 1997 at age 84.

Sources

1. Chicago Defender; Chicago Public Library (Abbott-Sengstacke Family Papers); Encyclopedia.com