[Michaeli] developed a love for the ailing paper and for what it and the Negro press had once been. This deeply researched, elegantly written history is a testament to that love. It is also a towering achievement that will not be soon forgotten.
Ethan Michaeli, a white University of Chicago graduate who worked at the paper from 1991 to 1996, traces with intelligence and empathy the Defender’s rise from shoestring origins as a four-page weekly produced in the dining room of Abbott’s landlady.
What makes the book so significant is that Michaeli not only details the history of the paper but also demonstrates its role in shaping the local and national political landscapes ... Despite the book’s sweep, there are oversights. Perhaps most important, Michaeli largely neglects to include the voices of everyday African Americans who made the paper the voice of black America.
...documents the remarkable progress the country has made in just a few generations from long years of serfdom for African-Americans enforced by law, tradition and the lynch mob.
Michaeli’s documentary-style prose lays out an obituary of sorts for the black press, a once mighty but now nearly defunct institution that fought for equality and made U.S. history along with recording it.
The book is not perfect. It has a number of small annoying errors ... But The Defender is a captivating read. Few stories are as inspiring as that of the founder, Robert S. Abbott, a poor black youth from Georgia who came to Chicago to sing in a quartet and was inspired and radicalized when he heard Frederick Douglass speak at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
