ProQuest Adds Chicago Defender
By Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 6/15/2005
ProQuest is adding a significant publication to its already impressive list of titles included in its ongoing Historical Newspapers project (InfoTech, LJ 5/1/05, p. 27). The company will digitize the full content of the African American newspaper The Chicago Defender from 1909 to 1975. In addition to being added to the Historical Newspapers database, the complete scans of the publication will be available through ProQuest's Black Studies Center and as a standalone.
The Defender was the leading African American news publication before World War I, focusing on issues significant to its audience, including covering the abandonment of the segregated South for work in the more industrialized North, reporting on the 1919 Red Summer Riots, and editorializing for antilynching legislation.
New perspectivesThe Defender also published the works of African American authors, including Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes. Because cross-searching in the databases is possible, a researcher can compare perspectives on reporting on the Marin Luther King assassination, Black Panther trials, and more. The digitized version will debut later this year.
