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Abstract
This study is a cultural history of the Chicago Defender during the 1920s. It examines the Defender's handling of advertisements for blues and jazz recordings during the period as a reflection of the readers' needs and interests. Rather than seeing the newspaper as something determined solely by editors, the research suggests that the newspaper was shaped by readers also who found symbolic meaning in the Defender 's music advertising. Grounded in the theories of cultural historians Robert Park, Sidney Kobre, James Carey and others, the present study suggests that the Defender's content was determined by outside factors. The ads were an indicator of the rich and growing audience for African American music on the city's South Side. The advertising is analyzed by subject and theme within the context of traditional uplift models in the black press. Among the subjects of the ads are broken love affairs, jails and travel, drinking and gambling. These subjects are united by a strong emphasis on emotional expression. Traditional uplift, with its emphasis on Victorian-era mores and personal success, was a part of the black press since its beginnings and also propelled the Chicago Defender, which was at odds with the music advertising. Additionally, the newspaper's editorial content within the entertainment pages is examined for examples of traditional uplift, which contrast with the emotion-charged, cathartic uplift blazoned by the advertising for the music of Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Lonnie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and others. Though part of the Defender 's mission was to elevate its readers through the manners and propriety associated with traditional uplift, the music was presenting an uplift that had to do with feeling rather than values, and that feeling was emanating from a community of readers for whom the Defender became an unwitting source of symbolic meaning.
