Роберт С. Абботт: Издатель, юрист и создатель парада Бад Билликен

African American publisher and lawyer

Robert Sengstacke Abbott (December 24, 1870 – February 29, 1940) was an American lawyer, newspaper publisher and editor. Abbott founded The Chicago Defender in 1905, which grew to have the highest circulation of any black owned newspaper in the country. Abbott founded the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic in August 1929. The parade, which has developed into a celebration for youth, education and African–American life in Chicago, Illinois, is the second largest parade in the United States.

Bud Billiken is a fiction character created by Abbott in 1923. During the Great Depression, Abbott featured Bud Billiken in the youth column of his newspaper, the Chicago Defender, as a symbol of pride, happiness, and hope for black residents. David Kellum, co founder of the newspaper then went on to celebrate this character by starting the “Bud Billiken Parade” in 1929. This parade is an annual parade held in Chicago, IL. It is the largest African American parade in the United States. The parade has since featured celebrities, politicians, businessmen, and many others. It is considered the second largest parade in the United States.

In 1912, Abbott met ʻAbdu'l Bahá, head of the Baháʼí Faith, through covering a talk of his during his stay in Chicago during his journeys in the West. By 1924 Abbott and his wife were listed as attending Baháʼí events in Chicago. After inventing the fictional character "Bud Billiken" with David Kellum for articles in the Defender, Abbott established the Bud Billiken Club. In 1929 Abbott and Kellum founded the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic. It became an occasion for African Americans to celebrate their pride and connections. Abbott was seeking an atmosphere free of race prejudice. Even in religious communities, he sometimes found that mixed race African Americans who were light skinned sometimes also demonstrated prejudice against those who were darker. Abbott officially joined the Baháʼí Faith in 1934. He had found that its convention to elect its National Spiritual Assembly seemed free of prejudice.

In 1919, Illinois Governor Frank Lowden appointed Abbott to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The commission conducted studies about the changes resulting from the Great Migration; in one period, 5,000 African Americans were arriving in the city every week. The Commission collected data to assess the population and published the book, The Negro in Chicago. He was buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois. His will left the newspaper in the control of his nephew, John Henry Sengstacke.

The Robert S. Abbott House in Chicago, where he lived from 1926 to his death, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. His childhood home in the Woodville neighborhood now in Savannah, Georgia, was designated as a city historic landmark. National Historic Landmark. An early biography of him was published in 1955 by Roi Ottley, The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott (Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1955). In a 1963 painting, Robert Abbott Founds the Chicago Defender, artist William McBride depicted a young Abbott founding the newspaper. The painting is now in the collection of the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago. Abbott is featured on the documentary series Profiles of African American Success. In 2017, Abbott was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.