Robert Sengstacke

Robert Abbott Sengstacke was born on the twenty-fourth of August 1943 at Chicago, Illinois, the son of John H. H. Sengstacke — the principal publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper — and Myrtle Picou Sengstacke. He was raised in the principal Sengstacke-family publishing household of mid-twentieth-century Chicago.

He was named after his great-uncle Robert Sengstacke Abbott — the founder of the Chicago Defender — and was raised in the principal Black newspaper-publishing household of mid-twentieth-century Chicago.

He enrolled at Bowling Green State University at Bowling Green, Ohio in 1961 and studied photography under the Bowling Green photography programme. He left Bowling Green in 1962 to join the principal Chicago Defender staff photographer programme under his father.

He was hired in 1962 as junior staff photographer of the Chicago Defender — and was promoted in 1965 to principal staff photographer of the Chicago Defender. He held the principal Defender staff photographer position from 1965 to 1992.

He produced across the principal late-1960s Defender staff photographer period the principal documentary photographic record of the principal Chicago and national Black Power and Black Arts movements — including the principal photographs of Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, the principal Chicago Black Panther Party leadership of Fred Hampton, the principal Chicago Republic of New Africa leadership, and the principal Chicago Black Arts movement organisations of the Organization of Black American Culture and AfriCobra.

He was the principal documentary photographer of the principal AfriCobra Black Arts movement collective at Chicago from 1968 — and produced the principal photographic record of the principal AfriCobra exhibitions and the principal AfriCobra Black Arts movement personalities including Jeff Donaldson, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Wadsworth Jarrell, and Jae Jarrell.

He was the principal documentary photographer of the principal Chicago Wall of Respect mural of 1967 — the principal post-Selma Black Arts movement community mural at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue at the principal Chicago South Side.

His principal archive — approximately sixty thousand surviving negatives of the Chicago Black Arts and Black Power movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s — was donated to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution in 2015.

He died at Chicago on the twenty-fifth of February 2017 of complications of cancer, at seventy-three.

He is honored here as the principal documentary photographer of the Black Power and Black Arts movements.