| Type | Weekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Owner | Tri-State Defender Board of Directors. |
| Publisher | Karanja A. Ajanaku |
| Editor | Karanja A. Ajanaku |
| Founded | November 3, 1951 (1951-11-03) |
| Headquarters | Memphis, Tennessee 38103, U.S. |
| Circulation | 4,373 weekly (as of 2011)[1] |
| Website | tsdmemphis |
TheTri-State Defender is aweeklyAfrican-American newspaper servingMemphis, Tennessee, and the nearby areas ofArkansas,Mississippi andTennessee.[2] It bills itself as "The Mid-South's Best Alternative Newspaper". TheDefender was founded in 1951 byJohn H. Sengstacke, owner of theChicago Defender. In 2013, the paper was locally purchased fromReal Times Media bythe Tri-State Defender Board of Directors
Sengstacke'sChicago Defender circulated widely across theSouthern United States, 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).[3]
In November 1951, Sengstacke and editorLewis O. Swingler, the former editor of theWorld,[4] published the first edition of theTri-State Defender, adopting the slogan "The South's Independent Weekly". The 20-page inaugural edition included "TheTri-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.[3] Swingler served as editor in chief until 1955.[5]
EditorL. Alex Wilson and hisTri-State Defender journalists led coverage of the 1955 murder ofEmmett Till, 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 theChicago Defender for weeks,[6] and the trial became a media sensation and landmark event in the Civil Rights Movement.[3] Wilson' s coverage of theCivil Rights Movement had a more powerful editorial influence than its competitor,The Memphis World, on the Memphis black community.[7]
TheTri-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 flagshipChicago Daily Defender, theMichigan Chronicle and theNew 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.[8]