Defender and Skeleton

The late Robert S. Abbott, publisher of the once-powerful Negro Chicago Defender, was soot-black. His two wives were white as snow. Wife No. 1 went around with her brownskin sister in order to prove that she was a Negro. Wife No. 2--Nordic-featured, with grey-blue eyes and straight chestnut hair--had no discernible relatives, dark or white.

Last week a newspaper drama hinged on whether Mrs. Abbott No. 2 could prove her race. In Chicago a cousin of childless Publisher Abbott filed petition to oust Mrs. Abbott from the Abbott estate and control of the waning Defender. Grounds: that she is white, hence was illegally married six years ago in Indiana (whose laws prohibit miscegenation).

The palmy days of the Defender were mostly over when Mrs. Abbott No. 2 appeared. In its million-dollar-a-year heyday (1919-28) the Defender brought Publisher Abbott (son of a Georgia slave) fame, social position, a Rolls-Royce, a Hearstian house filled with Hearstian gimcracks.

But when Abbott let his pint-sized brother-in-law, a Florida lawyer, take over (1926), the Defender started down the skids. Livelier competitors (the Baltimore Afro-American and Pittsburgh Courier) grabbed a lot of Defender circulation with pictures of barer brownskin and high yaller gals, more chest-thumping against race discrimination. The Defender staff had to be harshly shaken up. The brother-in-law, bounced at last, sued the now-ailing Abbott for $85,000. Mrs. Abbott No. 1 won an expensive divorce suit. Abbott put his favorite nephew in charge of the paper. The Defender went from bad to worse. Publisher Abbott died. Mrs. Abbott No. 2 stepped in. The nephew was fired. Thereupon he and his aunt started digging in the closet for a skeleton.

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