*PLEASE NOTE: We are unable at this time to provide digital scans of archival photos.*
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1910-1975
For back issues of the newspaper from 1905-1975 please visit The Chicago Defender Newpaper at ProQuest’s Historic Newspapers: Black Newspapers, an online, searchable database of full-page and image articles of the Chicago Defender in pdf format. ProQuest is a subscriber service available at many local libraries and academic institutions.
1975-Present
To access back issues from 1975-present. Please visit Proquest and search the “Real Times Media” Section in Ethnic Newswatch for “Chicago Defender”
The Chicago Defender photograph collection includes thousands of photographs published in the newspaper of African American life in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Most photographs date from the 1940s to the present. Highlights include extensive documentation of desegregation and the Civil Rights movement, including 200 photographs related to the murder of Emmett Till. The collection also includes photographs chronicling the history of black Chicago Politics, Religion, and Arts and Entertainment.
For a finding aid describing the Chicago Defender’s photo archives, please visit Mapping the Stacks at the University of Chicago: https://mts.lib.uchicago.edu/collections/findingaids/index.php?eadid=MTS.defender-organizations