Economic impact
Founded the Chicago Defender in 1905 with a starting capital of 25 cents; by 1920, the paper's weekly circulation exceeded 250,000 copies nationally, making it the most widely read Black-owned newspaper in the United States at that time, per circulation records cited by the Newberry Library's Chicago history collections. The Defender's reporting and editorial campaigns actively encouraged Black Southerners to migrate to Chicago and other northern cities during the Great Migration of 1910 to 1930, an editorial posture that historian James Grossman, in 'Land of Hope' (University of Chicago Press, 1989), identifies as a significant factor in the migration's scale and direction. The paper remains in operation and is now published by the Chicago Defender Charities.