Tri-State Defender

About Tri-State Defender

The Tri-State Defender is the weekly African-American newspaper of Memphis, Tennessee, serving the city and the nearby areas of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee — the tri-state Mid-South region that gives the paper its name. Founded on November 3, 1951, by John H. Sengstacke, the legendary owner of the Chicago Defender, it bills itself as "The Mid-South's Best Alternative Newspaper." In 2013 the paper was locally purchased from Real Times Media by the Tri-State Defender Board of Directors — rebranded under president and publisher Bernal E. Smith II's BEST Media Properties Inc. as The New Tri-State Defender — returning the historic paper to local Black ownership. Its website is tsdmemphis.com.

Founding in 1951

John H. Sengstacke's Chicago Defender circulated widely across the South, but in the early 1950s Sengstacke identified Memphis as a particularly attractive market: several African-American newspapers had failed to take root there, and a startup would face only one competitor — The Memphis World, founded in 1931 and publishing until 1961. In November 1951, Sengstacke and editor Lewis O. Swingler — the former editor of the World — published the first edition of the Tri-State Defender under the slogan "The South's Independent Weekly." The paper introduced itself to Memphis's Black community with the words: "The Tri-State Defender: It's Your Baby."

The Ten Point Program

The 20-page inaugural edition carried "The Tri-State Defender Ten Point Program": 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 wished to develop better human relations and advance the principles of American democracy, and to uphold the Christian principles undergirding the republic, among others. The program set the paper's tone for the decades to come: advocacy journalism in service of Black dignity and democratic ideals. Swingler served as editor-in-chief until 1955.

The Sengstacke legacy

The paper's Sengstacke roots ran deep. John Herman Henry Sengstacke Jr.'s nephew, Whittier Sengstacke Jr., later served as editor of the Tri-State Defender — the dedicated newsman credited with helping the newspaper keep rolling as it encountered turbulence over its coverage of lynchings in the South. Whittier Sengstacke Jr. died at 76, remembered by the paper as a newsman who shepherded it through some of its most difficult years. The Sengstacke family's Black press dynasty — from Robert Abbott's founding of the Chicago Defender through John's expansion to Memphis — made the Tri-State Defender a direct heir of the most famous Black newspaper in American history.

The Memphis World rivalry

Sengstacke's choice of Memphis was a calculated gamble against an entrenched competitor. The Memphis World, founded in 1931, was the city's established Black weekly — and Sengstacke cannily hired its former editor, Lewis O. Swingler, to launch the challenger. For a decade the two papers competed for Black Memphis's loyalty, until the World ceased publication in 1961, leaving the Tri-State Defender as the city's Black paper of record. The rivalry's end marked the Defender's definitive victory: the startup had outlasted the institution, and "The South's Independent Weekly" became the undisputed voice of Black Memphis.

Decades of Memphis coverage

Across the civil rights era and beyond, the Defender chronicled Black Memphis: the sanitation workers' strike of 1968 and Dr. King's assassination, the desegregation battles, the rise of Black political power in the city, and the cultural triumphs of the Memphis sound. A 1982 doctoral study of Tennessee's Black press counted the Memphis Tri-State Defender among the state's most significant papers — one of only three Black papers still printing in Tennessee by 1980 — and noted its continuous publication since 1951, far beyond the 7.4-year average life of the state's Black newspapers.

To be Memphis's Black newspaper across those decades was to document a revolution. The Defender's pages carried the movement's demands and the community's debates: school desegregation, voting rights, economic justice, police accountability — the same fights its Ten Point Program had pledged to cover in 1951. Through the King years, the Reynolds era, and the long transformation of the city's politics, the paper remained what it had always been: the reliable, respectable, resilient voice Black Memphis counted on.

Local ownership restored

In 2013, the paper underwent a rebranding when it was acquired from Real Times Media by Bernal E. Smith II's BEST Media Properties Inc. — purchased locally by the Tri-State Defender Board of Directors. Smith, as president and publisher, set the mission plainly: "Produce great local content, aggregate content from other places and disseminate it creatively." The staff — including Karanja Ajanaku as editor — recommitted the paper to its core strengths: credibility and influence in the community. In the beginning, Smith noted, the paper had been the only option in Memphis for an African-American perspective; its 65th birthday was celebrated in 2017 with the black-tie Legends and Leaders Gala.

Editorial leadership

The paper's masthead has listed publisher Calvin Anderson and editor Stephanie R. Jones, with Karanja A. Ajanaku serving as both publisher and editor in different eras alongside president Bernal E. Smith II. The weekly, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, reported circulation of 4,373 weekly as of 2011. It remains a member of the National Newspaper Publishers Association — the Black Press of America.

"The Mid-South's Best Alternative Newspaper"

The Defender's chosen billing — "The Mid-South's Best Alternative Newspaper" — captures its dual identity: a Black newspaper and an alternative paper, serving Memphis, eastern Arkansas and northern Mississippi with journalism the mainstream press doesn't provide. As Rhodes College historian Russ Wigginton wrote for the paper's 50th anniversary, it has been "a reliable, respectable and resilient voice that people have counted on" — perhaps taken for granted a little, as happens with institutions that earn deep confidence.

That confidence was earned the hard way: through decades of covering the stories no one else would, from the lynching coverage that brought turbulence in the Sengstacke years to the accountability reporting of the modern era. The paper's 2017 Legends and Leaders Gala — celebrating its 65th birthday in black tie — honored the community leaders the Defender had covered and championed across those decades, a reminder that the paper's influence extends well beyond its pages into the civic life of the Mid-South.

More than 70 years of Black Memphis in print

From its 1951 debut as "your baby" through the civil rights struggles, the Sengstacke family stewardship and its 2013 return to local ownership, the Tri-State Defender has published for more than seven decades — one of the longest continuous runs in the Black press. It remains Memphis's Black weekly: the paper that has told the Mid-South's African-American story, week after week, since Harry Truman was president.

That endurance is the story. Of the 112 Black newspapers published in Tennessee between 1865 and 1980, the average survived 7.4 years; the Defender has published for more than 70. It outlasted its founding competitor, survived the collapse of its Chicago parent's empire, and returned to local Black ownership in 2013. Through it all, it kept the promise of its 1951 Ten Point Program: to broadcast the achievements of the citizens it serves, to join hands across creed and color for better human relations, and to uphold the principles of American democracy — week after week, in Memphis, Tennessee.