The ''Tri-State Defender'' is a weekly African-American newspaper serving

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the County seat, seat of Shelby County, Tennessee, Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 Uni ...

, and the nearby areas of

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the ...

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mis ...

and

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

. It bills itself as "The Mid-South's Best Alternative Newspaper". The ''Defender'' was founded in 1951 by

John H. Sengstacke John Herman Henry Sengstacke (November 25, 1912 – May 28, 1997) was an American newspaper publisher and owner of the largest chain of African-American oriented newspapers in the United States. Sengstacke was also a civil rights activist and wor ...

, owner of the '' Chicago Defender''. In 2013, the paper was locally purchased from Real Times Media by

Best Media Inc. Best or The Best may refer to: People * Best (surname), people with the surname Best * Best (footballer, born 1968), retired Portuguese footballer Companies and organizations * Best & Co., an 1879–1971 clothing chain * Best Lock Corporation ...

History

Sengstacke's ''Chicago Defender'' circulated widely across the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, but Sengstacke in the early 1950s identified Memphis as a particularly attractive market, where several African-American newspapers had failed to take root and a startup would face only one competitor, ''The Memphis World'', which had begun in 1931 (and would continue publishing until 1961). In November 1951, Sengstacke and editor

Lewis O. Swingler Lewis Ossie Swingler (August 28, 1906 – September 25, 1962) was a pioneering African-American journalist, editor, and newspaper publisher from Crittenden County, Arkansas. He was editor of the ''Memphis World'' and editor in chief and copu ...

, the former editor of the ''World'', published the first edition of the ''Tri-State Defender'', adopting the slogan "The South's Independent Weekly". The 20-page inaugural edition included "The ''Tri-State Defender'' Ten Point Program", consisting of vows "to broadcast to the world the achievements of all the citizens it serves", "to join hands with all citizens regardless of creed or color who wish to develop better human relations and to advance the principals of American Democracy", and "to uphold those Christian principles which under gird our republic", among others. Swingler served as editor in chief until 1955. Editor L. Alex Wilson and his ''Tri-State Defender'' journalists led coverage of the 1955 murder of

Emmett Till Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery ...

, an African-American teen from Illinois who was killed in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman. Their stories and photographs dominated both their own paper and the ''Chicago Defender'' for weeks, and the trial became a media sensation and landmark event in the Civil Rights Movement. Wilson' s coverage of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

had a more powerful editorial influence than its competitor, ''The Memphis World'', on the Memphis black community. The ''Tri-State Defender'' in its first 50 years was part of Sengstacke Enterprises Inc., a chain of prominent African-American publications, which in the 1990s included the flagship ''Chicago Daily Defender'', the '' Michigan Chronicle'' and the '' New Pittsburgh Courier''. Following Sengstacke's death in 1997, the four-paper chain was held in a family trust until 2003, when it was sold for nearly $12 million to Real Times, a group of investors with several business and family ties to Sengstacke.

References

External links

* {{African American press Newspapers published in Tennessee African-American newspapers Publications established in 1951