Joseph Dandridge Bibb

Born in 1895 in Montgomery, Alabama, Joseph Dandridge Bibb studied at Atlanta University, Livingstone College, and Howard University before coming to Yale, where he earned a law degree in 1918. He also studied at Harvard and Columbia. Bibb moved to Chicago, where along with fellow Yale graduate Arthur C. MacNeal (Yale College, 1916), he helped establish the Chicago Whip, a weekly Black newspaper with a reputation for militant politics. Bibb and MacNeal spearheaded the “Don’t Spend Your Money Where You Can’t Work” campaign, which began in 1929. The campaign encouraged Black people to boycott white businesses that would not hire them, and the organizers claimed credit for securing thousands of jobs for African Americans in Chicago due to their direct-action techniques. The Whip often featured the writings of Marcus Garvey. It reached a weekly distribution of 65,000 copies, making it second only to the Chicago Defender among Black newspapers. After the newspaper shut down in 1939, Bibb became the managing editor of the Chicago office of the Pittsburgh Courier. He was also a practicing lawyer.

Bibb served as a trustee of the Chicago Public Library and of Provident Hospital, on the South Side. He was also active in Republican politics. In 1953, when the Republican governor made Bibb the director of public safety of Illinois, he became the first Black person in the governor’s cabinet and highest ranking Black person in state government. Bibb died in 1966.