Sengstacke graduated from Hampton University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1933.
Gallery of John Sengstacke
Columbus, Ohio 43210, United States
In 1933, John did his postgraduate work at the Ohio State University.
Career
Gallery of John Sengstacke
1942
John H. Sengstacke (right), 1942.
Gallery of John Sengstacke
1955
John H. Sengstacke (right) smiles as he poses next to an unidentified man with two plaques: one — the United States Treasury Award and the other — a mounted copy of "The President's Prayer", 1955.
Gallery of John Sengstacke
1956
Chicago, Illinois, United States
From left to right: former president Harry S. Truman, John H. Sengstacke and Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago in the 1956 Bud Billiken Parade.
Gallery of John Sengstacke
200 S E 4th St, Abilene, KS 67410, United States
John H. Sengstacke Presenting President Eisenhower with the Robert Abbott Award at Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.
John H. Sengstacke (right) smiles as he poses next to an unidentified man with two plaques: one — the United States Treasury Award and the other — a mounted copy of "The President's Prayer", 1955.
John H. Sengstacke was an American influential publisher, editor and owner of the Chicago Defender, the national voice of African-Americans, as well as other newspapers of that chain. Also, Sengstacke was a founder of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, of which John was elected President seven times. In addition, he was known as a civil rights activist, who worked for a strong black press.
Background
John H. Sengstacke was born on November 25, 1912, in Savannah, Georgia, United States. Sengstacke grew up in nearby Woodville, one of six children, three boys and three girls. He was a son of Herman Alexander Sengstacke, a Protestant minister, and Rosa Mae (Davis) Sengstacke, a missionary worker. Sengstacke’s father, in addition to his work as a minister and teacher, ran a small weekly newspaper, called the Woodville West End Post.
John was named after his paternal grandfather, John H. Sengstacke, who was a Congregationalist minister, teacher and publisher. Also, Robert Sengstacke Abbott, a lawyer, newspaper publisher, editor and founder of the Chicago Defender, a weekly newspaper, was John's uncle.
Education
Working at his father's paper, entitled Woodville West End Post, since he was a young boy, Sengstacke learned the newspaper business from the bottom up, beginning as a lowly printer’s devil — apprentice — and advancing until he was his father’s chief assistant.
Meanwhile, Sengstacke’s uncle, Robert S. Abbott, founded a paper of his own — the Chicago Defender. Abbott took an interest in his young nephew early on, and saw, that he received the kind of education, that would enable him to inherit his burgeoning publishing empire. After finishing his elementary education in Savannah, Sengstacke moved on to the Knox Institute, a private elementary and secondary school in Athens, Georgia, for African-Americans, then to Brick Junior College in North Carolina. He graduated from Brick in 1929, then enrolled at Hampton Institute (present-day Hampton University) in Virginia, Abbott’s alma mater, where he majored in business administration and wrote for the school paper, the Hampton Script. During summers, John would help out at the Chicago Defender and take printing and journalism classes at various Chicago schools.
Sengstacke graduated from Hampton University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1933. The same year, he did his postgraduate work at the Ohio State University.
In 1934, after a bit of postgraduate study at Ohio State University in 1933, John went to work for the Chicago Defender as a full-time editor, a position he held till the end of his life. In 1936, he was named a vice president and general manager of the Abbott Publishing Company, the posts he held till 1940. By this time, his uncle Abbott had built a formidable reputation in the world of black journalism. His paper had helped influence huge waves of Southern blacks to migrate into Northern cities after World War I.
By the 1930's, Abbott was ready to expand. He launched the Louisville (Kentucky) Defender in 1933, and in 1936, he started the Detroit-based Michigan Chronicle. As the scope of his company grew, he groomed Sengstacke to take over the operation.
Sengstacke’s role at the company increased through the rest of the 1930's. He wrote editorials and articles for all three papers. In 1940, he was also one of the chief organizers of the newly created Negro Newspaper Publisher’s Association (NNPA), now called the National Newspaper Publisher’s Association. Abbott died in 1940, and Sengstacke, at the age of 28, took over as a president of the chain, though not without a battle with Abbott’s widow over control of the company. By this time, the Chicago Defender was widely regarded as one of the most important black newspapers in the country, and had an estimated value of $300,000.
Like other newspaper editors, Sengstacke was exempted from military service during World War II. He volunteered to serve as a chairman of the United States Office of War Information advisory committee on the Negro press. His paper both chronicled the achievements of black soldiers and exposed discrimination, that took place in the military. Sengstacke also personally influenced President Harry Truman’s decision to integrate the armed forces.
In 1944, Sengstacke began the first of his three terms as president of the Negro Newspaper Publisher’s Association (present-day National Newspaper Publishers Association). In that position, he helped to bring about a number of changes in the black publishing industry, including the transition from subscriptions to advertising as the most important source of financial support.
Sengstacke spent the post-war years getting further involved in the community and national affairs. He lobbied for the creation of jobs for African Americans in the postal service, and he was a key force in the demolition of the color barrier in major league baseball. The Defender’s Harry McAlpin was the first African-American journalist to cover the White House.
In 1947, Sengstacke helped to co-found Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal American political organization advocating progressive policies, with Joseph Alsop, Stewart Alsop, Chester Bowles, John Kenneth Galbraith, Leon Henderson, Hubert Humphrey, James I. Loeb, Reinhold Niebuhr, Joseph P. Lash, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. and others.
Sengstacke added another paper, the Tri-State Defender, published in Memphis and covering Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, to the chain in 1952. In 1956, he converted his flagship Chicago Defender from a weekly to a daily newspaper, one of only three black dailies in existence at the time. During that period, he also began to focus more of the paper’s attention on Chicago issues, without completely eliminating coverage of national and international events. This approach both boosted circulation and made it easier to bring in advertising dollars.
Sengstacke added several more links to his chain in 1966 with the purchase of the Pittsburgh Courier Company, which consisted of the Pittsburgh Courier and seven other papers. By this time, however, the era of the great Negro newspapers was already in decline.
By the 1970's, many African-American readers were dismayed at Sengstacke’s insistence on backing white Democratic politicians, rather than progressive black candidates. Meanwhile, advertisers were putting their money into mainstream papers, rather than Black ones, whose readership numbers were nosediving. The Defender’s journalistic quality was also becoming suspect by this time. In spite of the paper’s decline, however, Sengstacke himself remained a huge presence in Chicago’s black community.
By the 1990's, circulation of the Chicago Defender had dipped to 25,000 from a peak of 160,000 in the 1940's. The Sengstacke chain as a whole, however, remained the biggest chain of African-American-owned newspapers in the United States. In 1992, Sengstacke was named the "International Man of the Year" by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England, in recognition of his decades of community service. In Chicago, he led a drive to build Provident Hospital, and later after it had closed, he worked to have it reopened and modernized under the auspices of Cook County Hospital.
Sengstacke died on May 28, 1997 in Chicago at the age of 84, of complications from a stroke. Under the terms of a trust he had created more than twenty years earlier, he left instructions, that the Chicago Defender and his other newspapers be sold after his death. In spite of its decline over the past few decades, the Defender remained at the time of Sengstacke’s death an influential publication among African-Americans in Chicago. Regardless of the paper’s future in the hands of its new ownership, its past and that of its longtime publisher, loom large in African American history.
In 1947, Sengstacke became one of the co-founders of Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal American political organization, advocating progressive policies. Also, he played important public roles in the struggle for integration and civil rights, including membership on the Presidential advisory panel, that paved the way for the integration of the armed services in 1949.
Sengstacke was a national political force as he was on ten presidential commissions and endorsed former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. But he refused to quell the storm, that led up to the 1967 Chicago riots, because he felt Daly had ignored the needs of blacks.
In addition, he lobbied for the creation of jobs for African-Americans in the postal service, and he was instrumental in the demolition of the color barrier in Major League Baseball.
As president of the group, now known as the National Newspaper Publishers Association, Sengstacke proved to be a master at wielding its political leverage. He almost casually persuaded President Roosevelt to allow the first African-American reporter at a Presidential news conference, for example.
During his lifetime, John H. Sengstacke was also an active supporter of the United Negro College Fund and the Boy Scouts of America.
Membership
John was a member of the American Newspaper Publications Association, American Society of Newspaper Editors, of which he was also a director.
Connections
In 1939, John married Myrtle Elizabeth Picou. Myrtle was an activist in her own right, working at political fundraising, as well as cultural and art activities. Their marriage produced three children - John Herman Henry Sengstacke III, Lewis Willis Sengstacke and Robert Abbott Sengstacke, a photojournalist, named in honor of his father's uncle.