[1] Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim Crow-era violence and urged black people in the American South to settle in the north in what became the Great Migration.

Under his nephew and chosen successor, John H. Sengstacke, the paper dealt with racial segregation in the United States, especially in the U.S. military, during World War II.

Washington, D.C., and international correspondent Ethel Payne, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, author Willard Motley, music critic Dave Peyton, journalists Ida B.

[7] The Chicago Defender's editor and founder Robert Sengstacke Abbott played a major role in influencing the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North by means of strong, moralistic rhetoric in his editorials and political cartoons, the promotion of Chicago as a destination, and the advertisement of successful black individuals as inspiration for blacks in the South.

Lynchings were at a peak at the turn of the century, in the period when southern state legislatures passed new constitutions and laws to disenfranchise most blacks and exclude them from the political system.

Abbott openly blamed the lynching violence on the white mobs who were typically involved, forcing readers to accept that these crimes were "systematic and unremitting".

The art in the Defender, particularly its political cartoons by Jay Jackson and others, explicitly addressed race issues and advocated northern migration of blacks.

[9] Abbott positioned his paper as a primary influence of these movements before historians would, for he used the Defender to initiate and advertise a "Great Northern Drive" day, set for May 15, 1917.

Abbott presented Chicago as a promised-land with abundant jobs, as he included advertisements "clearly aimed at southerners," that called for massive numbers of workers wanted in factory positions.

[8] The Defender featured letters and poetry submitted by successful recent migrants; these writings "served as representative anecdotes, supplying readers with prototype examples ... that characterized the migration campaign".

"[10] In 1923, Abbott and editor Lucius Harper created the Bud Billiken Club for black children through the "Junior Defender" page of the paper.

[12] Abbott took a special interest in his nephew, John H. Sengstacke (1912–1997), paying for his education and grooming him to take over the Defender, which he did in 1940 after working with his uncle for several years.

In July 2019, the Chicago Defender reported that recent print runs had numbered 16,000 but that its digital edition reached almost half a million unique monthly visitors.