the United States, Abbot studied the printing trade at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), a historically black college in Virginia from 1892 to 1896. At Hampton, he sang with the Hampton Choir and Quartet, which toured nationally. He earned a law degree from Kent College of Law, Chicago, in 1898. Career Abbott tried to set up a law practice, working for a few years in Gary, Indiana; and Topeka, Kansas. He returned home to Georgia for a period, then went back to Chicago, where he could see changes arriving with thousands of new migrants from the rural South. Chicago Defender After settling in Chicago, in 1905 Abbott founded The Chicago Defender newspaper with an initial investment of 25¢ (). He started printing in a room at his boardinghouse; his landlady encouraged him, and he later bought her an 8-room house. He wanted to push for job opportunities and social justice, and was eager to persuade Black people to leave the segregated, Jim Crow South for Chicago. A key part of his distribution network was made up of African-American railroad porters, who were highly respected among Black people, and by 1925 they organized a union as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. They often sold or distributed the paper on trains. Defender circulation reached 50,000 by 1916; 125,000 by 1918; and more than 200,000 by the early 1920s. Credited with contributing to the Great Migration of rural southern Black people to Chicago, the Defender became the most widely circulated black newspaper in the country. It was known as "America's Black Newspaper." Its success resulted in Abbott becoming one of the first self-made millionaires of African-American descent; his business expanded as African Americans moved to the cities and became an urbanized, northern population. From the early 20th century through 1940, 1.5 million Black people moved to major cities in the Northeast and Mid-West. They were eager to know about conditions, to find housing, and to learn more about their new lives in cities. Most were from rural areas of the South. From 1890 to 1908 all the southern states had passed constitutions or laws that raised barriers to voter registration and effectively disenfranchised most Black people and many poor whites. They were utterly closed out of the political systems. Schools and other public facilities reserved for Black people were typically underfunded and ill-maintained. Legislatures imposed Jim Crow conditions, producing facilities for Black