Today in Chicago History: Chicago Defender — ‘the world's greatest weekly' — founded by Robert Sengstacke Abbott
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexican culture, not independence
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
High temperature: 94 degrees (1949)
Low temperature: 32 degrees (1992)
Precipitation: 1.66 inches (1892)
Snowfall: None
1905: The Chicago Defender newspaper is founded. Robert Sengstacke Abbott started the newspaper he called 'The World's Greatest Weekly,' encouraging Black Americans born and raised in the South — like himself — to move north during the Great Migration of the 20th century. More than two-thirds of the newspaper's readership base was located outside of Chicago by the start of World War I, according to the Defender.
Evolving from a weekly into a daily newspaper, the Defender became a national voice for African Americans, documenting racial inequality and championing the Civil Rights movement. Abbott thanked the children who sold his newspaper on street corners by throwing a parade in their honor. It's known today as the Bud Billiken Parade.
The Defender ceased print publication in 2019, but still exists in a digital format at chicagodefender.com.
1930: The Merchandise Mart opened. At 24 stories and 4.2 million square feet, the building was then the largest in the world, surpassed by the Pentagon a decade later. The space was developed by Marshall Field & Co. to house wholesale products for department store buyers.
The massive building, which had its own 60654 ZIP code, was rebranded as the Mart as part of a $40 million renovation in 2016.
1970: After the fatal shootings that took place during a protest over U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia at Kent State University in Ohio, classes were canceled for the rest of the week at Northwestern University.
2005: Podiatrist Ronald Mikos was found guilty in the death of Joyce Brannon, a nurse and church caretaker who was going to testify against him in a Medicare fraud investigation.
Authorities alleged in a 25-count indictment that Mikos defrauded Medicare of more than $1.25 million by falsely claiming to have performed thousands of surgeries and that he obstructed justice by recruiting patients to lie to investigators about the fraud. In Brannon's case, authorities said, Mikos fraudulently billed Medicare for 85 surgeries on her feet that had not been carried out.
How many presidential pardons or sentence commutations have been granted to people from Illinois?
After deliberating for parts of three days during the punishment phase of the trial, some jurors told the Tribune the decision to impose the death penalty had been a difficult one. Mikos, who claims he is innocent, is incarcerated in the federal prison in Terre Haute. President Joe Biden commuted the federal death sentence for the former Chicago podiatrist to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Dec. 23, 2024.
2017: Ebony announced plans to move editorial operations to Los Angeles, cutting one-third of its staff.
Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Kori Rumore and Marianne Mather at krumore@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump escalates his racist attacks on Black Americans
Donald Trump is not a subtle man. Given his core nature and personality, Trump's attacks on prominent Black Americans have recently become even more explicit and direct. First, he accused former President Barack Obama of 'treasonous' behavior for launching an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. But that was not the end of it. On Monday, following a criminal referral from Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered federal prosecutors to open a grand jury investigation into the baseless accusations. Multiple investigations, including two led by Republicans, and other reporting have repeatedly shown that Russia did, in fact, seek to meddle in the election in favor of Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by launching a social media disinformation campaign using Russian bot farms, and by hacking the Clinton campaign's emails. No such conspiracy on Obama's part exists. But with Trump's consolidation of power and lack of traditional guardrails, he has the full power of the state at his command to advance his authoritarian campaign against Obama, Clinton and other people and groups that he has already targeted — or will soon be targeting — for 'treason' and other 'crimes.' In the meantime, Trump has placed other prominent Black people in his sights. Last week, Trump targeted Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Al Sharpton and others with claims they were part of a conspiracy in which they were paid to endorse his rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election. 'IT'S NOT LEGAL!' he posted on Truth Social. 'For these unpatriotic 'entertainers,' this was just a CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL way to capitalize on a broken system.' Trump said he would soon 'call for a major investigation.' Again, no such conspiracy exists. On Aug. 1, Trump called radio personality Charlamagne tha God, who is a Black man, a 'low IQ individual' and a 'racist sleazebag' because he dared to question the president's policies and behavior. On Fox News' 'My View with Lara Trump,' Charlamagne tha God said 'the least of us are still being impacted the worst' and was critical of Trump's response to the Epstein scandal. Then, in a Truth Social Post on Monday, Trump criticized CBS journalist Gayle King, who is also Winfrey's best friend. 'Gayle King's career is over. She should have stayed with her belief in TRUMP. She never had the courage to do so. No talent, no ratings, no strength!!!' But the president still was not finished with his bigoted provocations. On Tuesday, he escalated his racist appeals, telling CNBC in a phone interview that 'inner city' people — a not-so-subtle code for Black Americans — are lazy. 'Illegal aliens' — meaning Hispanics and Latinos — are strong and have a natural talent for physical labor, he said. '[P]eople that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They're just not doing that work, and they've tried, we've tried, everybody tried, they don't do it…These people do it naturally, naturally.' These are all — Trump's slur that Winfrey, Beyoncé and other Black celebrities are basically crooks, and that Black people are inherently lazy — centuries-old white supremacist tropes. His comments are part of a much larger pattern of behavior where he has repeatedly insulted Black people, specifically Black women, as being dumb or stupid or 'low IQ.' This is the same white racist 'logic' used to justify Black chattel slavery and over 100 years of American apartheid and racial tyranny in the South, and other parts of the country, under the period of Jim Crow and into the post-civil rights era and beyond. The National Museum of African American History and Culture explains the origins of the stereotype that Black people are somehow inherently 'lazy' as compared to white people and other 'races' as: Many of the stereotypes created during the height of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and were used to help commodify black bodies and justify the business of slavery. For instance, an enslaved person, forced under violence to work from sunrise to sunset, could hardly be described as lazy. Yet laziness, as well as characteristics of submissiveness, backwardness, lewdness, treachery, and dishonesty, historically became stereotypes assigned to African Americans. Trump's racist attacks merited media attention. But it did not receive the in-depth coverage it deserved. As Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift of The Bulwark observed of Trump's accusations of treason against Obama, 'You might expect it to be big news. And yet it faded into the background almost at once. How far through the looking glass are we, that this sort of thing reads to so many as a 'dog bites man' story?…' In a searing essay, former MSNBC host and author Joy Reid captured the moment: I guess we Blacks can just hang it up, at this point. Companies have effectively been told they're not allowed to hire us anywhere…Presumably, the regime envisions whatever Black people, brown people, women and LGBTQ people who aren't deported, working as maids in white Christian homes, like in the 'good old days' when America was great… Filmmaker Kevin Willmott put it another way in The Nation: 'The Confederacy has gobbled up the Union…The entire nation is capitulating to the new Confederate States of America.' The mainstream media's failure to consistently connect Trump's racism and authoritarianism to the nation's worsening democratic crisis is not a mere 'failure of imagination.' It is an act of complicity that further normalizes racism and authoritarianism in the Age of Trump. Further, as media critics like Dan Froomkin and Mark Jacob have argued, it is actually a willful refusal to understand how racism and authoritarianism intersect and amplify the other's power to erode human freedom, dignity, agency and flourishing across racial lines. The normalization of Trump and the MAGA Republicans' authoritarianism (if not naked fascism), racism and general hostility towards Black and brown people is not abstract. Such values and policies have significant negative health, emotional, material and other detrimental outcomes. This is not a coincidence or accident. It is the predictable and de facto desired outcome and goal. Philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West has described Black Americans as historically existing in a state of being 'unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated for who they are.' Psychologists and other experts described the sum effect of these forces as causing 'racial battle fatigue' — a form of collective post-traumatic stress disorder — among Black people and other non-whites in America and across the West. For example, public health and other experts have demonstrated how racial fatigue shortens the lives of people of color because of how chronic stress from navigating a society where racial discrimination profoundly shapes life outcomes. To that point, racial battle fatigue has been shown to lead to premature aging through epigenetic processes. How much longer will Black Americans and the heirs to other great freedom struggles keep sacrificing for a country that is choosing self-destruction — for a nation accelerating toward fascism? What will happen then if those who are the conscience of the nation decide to turn their backs on it? What is the cost of loving a country that does not love you back? I don't pretend to have an answer. But I do know this: If those Americans who are the conscience of the nation turn away from it, the consequences for the country's future will be nothing short of existential. The post Trump escalates his racist attacks on Black Americans appeared first on
New York Post
15 hours ago
- New York Post
Illegal immigrant driver was three times legal limit when he allegedly killed NJ mom, young daughter in fatal crash
The illegal immigrant who drove an SUV head-on into a sedan carrying a young mother and her 11-year-old daughter, killing both, had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit, New Jersey officials revealed this week. Raul Luna-Perez had also been spotted speeding in the moments just before the fatal July 26 crash, and eyewitnesses told cops they watched his SUV pass four other vehicles before making the fifth, and fatal, attempt. 4 Dayanara Cortes and Maria Pleitez were U.S. citizens, but will be buried in El Salvador. Advertisement Luna-Perez, 43, was driving more than 60 miles an hour down a residential street in Lakewood when his Dodge Durango rammed into 42-year-old Maria Pleitez's Nissan Sentra, killing her in an instant, investigators said this week. 4 Cops say moments before the crash, Raul Luna-Perez was driving 60 miles per hour on a residential road in Lakewood. Y Smith/TLS Maria's daughter, Dayanara Cortes, 11, died moments after arriving at a nearby hospital. Advertisement The mother and daughter were on their way to Wawa for milkshakes when they were struck, Pleitez's niece, Maria del Carmen Pleitez, 39, told The Post. Dayanara's friend, also an 11-year-old girl, was in the car with them but survived. She has not been identified by police. A woman who was with Luna-Perez at the time of the crash was also injured, but was expected to recover. 4 Luna-Perez is Mexican, but authorities can't pinpoint when, how, or where he entered the U.S. Homeland Security Advertisement Luna-Perez has been illegally living in Red Bank, N.J., since early 2023, federal sources told The Post. It's unclear when and where he crossed into the US. The suspect was free to drive despite two DUI arrests in March and April and a domestic violence arrest in 2023, according to records. Luna-Perez's charges were upgraded to two counts of aggravated manslaughter and two counts of strict liability vehicular homicide Thursday after police received the results of his bloodwork, prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer confirmed. Last week, Luna-Perez was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide and one count of assault by auto. Advertisement 4 A wake for Cortes and Pleitez drew more than 150 mourners. Leonardo Munoz Luna-Perez is back in a county jail after spending the last week in an ICE detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, said Billhimer, who plans to keep the accused behind bars until trial. 'Thanks to the cooperation of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Luna-Perez has been returned to Ocean County to face these upgraded charges,' Billhimer said in a statement. 'His return sends a clear message that our federal partners share in our mission to hold those individuals that commit serious crimes accountable — regardless of their immigration status.'
Newsweek
16 hours ago
- Newsweek
Mexico Quashes Fears of US Military 'Invasion'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The U.S. military will not enter Mexico, the country's president has said, after it was reported Donald Trump had authorized such a move to tackle Latin American drug cartels. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her country would cooperate with the U.S. "but there will be no invasion." Her comments follow a report in The New York Times that the U.S. president had secretly signed a directive to begin using military force on foreign soil. Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment. President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum at Palacio Nacional on August 06, 2025 in Mexico City, Mexico. President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum at Palacio Nacional on August 06, 2025 in Mexico City, It Matters The Trump administration has pledged to crack down on drug trafficking, targeting Latin American gangs, which it has declared foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). In recent months, Mexico has worked with the U.S. to curb the illegal flow of both migrants and drugs through the countries' border but the U.S using the military to target the groups would mark a significant escalation in enforcement. Sheinbaum's comments set down a red line over the reported but unconfirmed Trump policy at a tricky diplomatic time as the U.S. leader imposes tariffs on trading partners. What To Know The New York Times, citing sources close to the matter,reported that Trump had directed the Pentagon for military operations at sea and on foreign soil to target cartels. This reported directive, which has not been confirmed, appears to follow an executive order Trump had earlier signed designating eight drug cartels as terrorist entities, six of which are Mexican. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico said in a statement Friday both countries would use "every tool at our disposal to protect our peoples" from drug trafficking groups without giving further details. But Sheinbaum told reporters that the U.S. "is not going to come to Mexico with their military," which would be "absolutely off the table." Brandan Buck, Cato Institute foreign policy research fellow, previously told Newsweek that such a unilateral action by the U.S. "would assuredly fail to stem the flow of drugs into the United States while causing significant diplomatic fallout." In May, Sheinbaum had said she had rejected Trump's offer of direct U.S. military assistance, saying that "our territory is inalienable." U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson said on X that fentanyl seizures at the border were down and noted the collaboration between Sheinbaum and Trump. What People Are Saying Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum: "There will be no invasion—that is rejected, absolutely United States is not going to come to Mexico with troops." U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson in a statement Friday: "We are united. We will use all the tools at our disposal to protect our peoples, working collaboratively, as two sovereign allies." White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in a statement to Newsweek on Friday said that Trump's "top priority is protecting the homeland, which is why he took the bold step to designate several cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations." What Happens Next The White House has not yet addressed the reported directive.
