Author Michaeli, former copy editor and reporter at The Chicago Defender discusses his highly acclaimed book, The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America. Founded in 1905, The Chicago Defender developed a national reputation by investigating lynching and other abuses of the Jim Crow segregation system. Michaeli describes how this influential newspaper became a national communications vehicle for Black America, fostering the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the South to the cities of the North. The Chicago Defender also negotiated the integration of the U.S. Armed Forces, and primed the pump for the civil rights movement.
