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 black 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.

One of the nation's leading Black newspapers, the New York Amsterdam News captured the vibrancy and cultural richness of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, advocated for the desegregation of the U.S. military during World War II, and fought for civil rights in the 1960s, while covering local, national, and international news.