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Robert Sengstacke Abbott 1868 - 1940 African American lawyer and newspaper publisher. Born in rederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia to former slave parents, Abbott was still a baby when his father, Thomas Abbott, died. lora, his mother, then met and married John Sengstacke, who came to Georgia from Germany in 1869. Sengstacke's back- ground was remarkable: his father, Herman, was a wealthy German merchant immigrant who in 1847 had purchased the freedom of a slave woman, Tama, from the auction block and subsequently married her; John, their child, was sent to Germany to be raised there. John returned to the States and met the German speaking Flora, married, and raised Abbott with a large family background in cross-race successes. John was a Congregationalist missionary who wrote: "There is but one church,and all who are born of God are members of it. God made a church, man made denominations. God gave us a Holy Bible, disputing men made different kinds of disciples." [Abbott went on and studied the printing trade at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) from 1892 to 1896. He received a law degree from Kent College of Law, Chicago in 1898, but because of race prejudice in the United States was unable to practice, despite attempts to establish law offices in Gary, Indiana, Topeka, Kansas, and Chicago, Illinois. In 1905 he founded The Chicago Defender with an initial investment of 25 cents. The Defender, which became the most widely circulated black newspaper in the country, came to be known as "America's Black Newspaper" and made Abbott one of the first self-made millionaires of African-American descent. Abbott also published a short-lived periodical called Abbott's Monthly. The Defender actively promoted the northward migration of Black Southerners, particularly to Chicago; indeed, its columns not only reported on, but helped to bring about the Great Migration (African American). Defender circulation reached 50,000 by 1916; 125,000 by 1918; and more than 200,000 by the early 1920s. A key distribution network for the newspaper were the African-American railroad porters (who by 1925 came to organize as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters). Abbott met `Abdu'l-Bahá, head of the Bahá' aith, in 1912 covering a talk of his during his stay in Chicago and was listed as a frequenter of Bahá'í events in Chicago with his wife in 1924. After inventing the fictional character "Bud Billiken" with David Kellum, Abbott established the Bud Billiken Club and in 1929 Abbott and Kellum founded the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic. After searching through several religious communities for an atmosphere free of race prejudice, even among "light skinned" African-Americans, Abbott officially joined the Bahá'í Faith in 1934 because of its freedom from such prejudice at the convention to elect its National Spiritual Assembly. Though some of the Sengstacke family became Nazis, Abbott continued correspondence and economic aid to those that accepted his family history, and also assisted the owners of his birth father--the descendants of Captain Charles Stevens--whom Abbott was able to assist during the Depression; even to paying for the education of children. Abbott died of Bright's disease in 1940 and wainterred in the Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, IL. His will left the newspaper in the control of his nephew, John Henry Sengstacke.