Chicago Bee

The Chicago Bee or Chicago Sunday Bee was a Chicago-based weekly newspaper founded by Anthony Overton, an African American, for primarily African-American readers. The paper was committed to covering "wholesome and authentic news",[4] and adopted a middle-class, conservative tone.[5] Politically, it was aligned with the Republican Party.[6]

After sharing quarters with the Hygienic Company in the 1920s, the Bee moved into the new Chicago Bee Building , an Art Deco structure built between 1929 and 1931.[7] However, after Overton's bank failed in the 1930s, the two businesses shared quarters once again, as the Hygienic Company moved into the Bee building.[8]

Chandler Owen became editor of the Bee after moving to Chicago.[9] The Bee initially supported the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which Owen supported, but later joined other publications including the Chicago Defender in opposing the union.[10]

Subsequent editors of the paper included Ida B. Wells and Olive Diggs.[11] The Bee's editorial staff was mostly female,[12] and the newspaper covered the black women's club movement extensively.[4] It distinguished itself from other newspapers in the Chicago black press in its promotion of black history and literature.[13][12]

The Bee sponsored the original "Mayor of Bronzeville" contest which led to the use of the term "Bronzeville" for the neighborhood.[4] The concept was originally suggested by theater editor James Gentry, who coined the term and had been sponsoring a beauty contest in the neighborhood since 1916.[14] When Gentry left the paper in 1932, he took his concept with him to the Chicago Defender, which continued the contests.[14]

The paper's founder and owner Anthony Overton was a wealthy industrialist, owning a number of concerns including the Overton Hygienic Company, a successful cosmetics firm.[15] He had also made a previous venture in publishing, in the form of the Half Century Magazine.[15] After Overton's death in 1946, the Bee was briefly continued by his sons in a tabloid format, but was unsuccessful.[1] It folded in 1947.[3]

Very little of the Bee survives today, apart from the building it occupied. One historian was unable to find a single intact issue from the years 1925 to 1935.[16]