Pittsburgh Courier

Newspaper founded in 1907 that promoted economic and political power for African Americans. The Pittsburgh Courier published both local and national editions, which allowed its editors and writers to bring attention to events and influence African Americans' opinions across the United States.

The Pittsburgh Courier was established in 1907 by Edwin Harleston, a security guard and aspiring writer. The paper gained national prominence after 1910 when attorney Robert Lee Vann took over as editor and publisher. By the 1930s, the newspaper had become one of the most widely read African [Page 639]American newspapers in the United States, with a circulation of almost 200,000 readers. Well-known columnists for the paper included Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, the scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, the writer James Weldon Johnson, and Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam. The author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston once served as a reporter for the paper, covering a controversial murder trial.

From the very beginning, the Courier took on a number of important issues affecting African American communities. In editorials, articles, and images, the newspaper argued for better hospitals, housing, and education for black communities in Pittsburgh and the nation as a whole. The newspaper often ran editorials and petitions against derogatory images of African Americans, such as the daily Amos ‘n’ Andy radio show of the 1930s. The Courier also advocated for the integration of professional sports.

The Pittsburgh Courier offered political advice for African Americans. The newspaper supported the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League and was influential in arguing that African American voters in the 1930s should shift their loyalties from the Republican Party, remembered as the party of Lincoln and the abolition of slavery, to the Democrats. The paper argued that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, and his package of reforms, known as the New Deal, could better serve African American communities in facing the Great Depression. The Courier also reported on political events in Africa, which often received less coverage in white newspapers.

The Pittsburgh Courier was a particularly influential and popular African American newspaper in the 1930s and 1940s, along with the Baltimore Afro-American and Chicago Defender. One of the Courier's most important initiatives was the Double V Campaign, launched during World War II. With this campaign, the newspaper argued that African Americans should both support the war effort abroad and fight against racism in the United States. African American soldiers should return to full citizenship rights in the United States, the Courier asserted. Other African American newspapers joined the Courier in the Double V Campaign. In response, the federal government labeled the Courier and the Chicago Defender radical and threats to the war effort. The newspapers were occasionally censored during the war.

The circulation of the Courier decreased in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1965, John Sengstacke, owner of the Chicago Defender, bought the newspaper, which was renamed the New Pittsburgh Courier, which continues to publish news of interest to African Americans.