Nick Chiles

Nick Chiles, founded and edited the Topeka Plaindealer, a newspaper that ran from January 1899 to November 1958. Chiles's Plaindealer was said to be the most successful African American newspaper in Kansas and one of the strongest in the nation. It became the longest running black newspaper in the United States.

Chiles, the business manager and owner of the Topeka Plainsdealer, was born in Abbeville county, South Carolina, to slave parents. He went to Kansas in 1886, with only five dollars in his pocket. He, however, had an abundance of self confidence and energy, with a meager education and an inherent ability to make money; he applied himself diligently to everything that came to hand, and has succeeded, in the face of the usual difficulties, in acquiring a reasonable amount of wealth. He is at present the owner of three large buildings on East Seventh street in Topeka, and also has interest in several pieces of farm land scattered over the State.

He began in 1899 the publication of the Topeka Plainsdealer, devoted to the interest of the colored people. This paper has steadily grown in favor with the public and now ranks as one of the strongest papers published by colored men in the United States. It has among its readers people of both races. He gives employment to a number of colored girls and boys, who are learning the printing and binding business in his office. In this office is printed the official business for the colored Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and several of the church minutes are printed here.

The plant of the Plainsdealer is valuted at $2000, and is one of the best equipped Negro offices in the West. Mr. Chiles also owns and operates one of the best equipped hotels in the West. In spite of intense opposition he has successfully operated all his various business enterprises and is gradually forging to the front.

When Mrs. Carrie Nation began her temperance crusade against the joints of Topeka and the so called Law and Order people organized under the influence an aroused public sentiment, Mr. Chiles manifested a deep interest in her work. As a result of her crusade, Mrs. Nation was arrested for destroying public property in a Topeka tavern (with a hatchet), and placed in the county jail, and there she was deserted by her so called friends. She called upon Nick Chiles to come forward and furnish her bond, which he did. It was only after thanking Chiles publicly that Mrs. Nation learned Chiles owned a bar that was one of Topeka's leading "joints." He later helped her start a newspaper called, 'The Smasher’s Mail.' However, after just three issues, Nation and Chiles disagreed and the partnership ended.

The Story of a Rising Race: The Negro in Revelation, In History and Citizenship, By Rev. J. J. Pipkins. (1902); Kansas Historical Society