According to Frank Bolden, a former Courier reporter, the postage for the first issue of the Pittsburgh Courier (January 1910) was paid for by Parthenia Tanner a cousin of the painter Henry Ossawa Tanner whose mother was the landlord of Harleston. That first issue listed Harleston as Editor; Rev. Scott Wood as City Editor; Hepburn Carter, Advertising Manager; and Marion Tanner, nephew of Harleston’s landlady, as Subscription Manager.
Soon the committee engaged another Loendi Club member, attorney Robert L. Vann to draw up the newspaper’s charter and extended to Vann shares of the organization’s stock as payment.
One of the most important decisions the committee made was to engage the young lawyer, a 1906 Western Pennsylvania University (now the University of Pittsburgh) graduate and in 1909 the first African-American to graduate from what is now Pitt Law School.
Vann filed the charter for the Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Company on March 10, 1910. By late fall early summer of 1910 Vann had assumed co-editorship with Harleston while Posey served as president of the company. Within a year Harleston would leave the paper and the city to go back south. Nothing has been written about him since.
Harleston was a native of Charleston, S.C., and had moved to Pittsburgh from Atlantic City. He was employed at H.J. Heinz Co., on the North Side, some say as a security guard and others as a messenger. He was an educated man, with industrial training as a carpenter and a business background as a partner in the Harleston and Wilson Undertaker & Embalmer Co. in Charleston.
But because he didn’t have the capital, nor the knowledge of how to run a paper he was rapidly forced out by Vann, who had the money and used it to purchase as much stock as he could, eventually purchasing the majority of the stock which allowed him to move forward as the Editor and Publisher of the paper in which he controlled until his death in 1940. But there would not have been a paper if Harlston had not come up with the idea of stepping out of the small box of a Poetry Sheet to a newspaper.
The visionary Vann had become the editor, treasurer and later publisher of the paper. For years Vann did not pull a salary from the newspaper but was instead paid with stocks and bonds. The company was formally incorporated on Aug. 10, 1910. Vann went about the business of making the paper a first class weekly and the most important African-American paper in Pittsburgh and throughout the country. The first office was located at 1212 Wylie Ave. in Jackson’s Undertaking Co. and by 1914 had moved to Vann’s law offices at 518 Fourth Ave., Downtown.
In 1914 he hired Ira Lewis another Pittsburgh migrant from North Carolina as business manager. Lewis began almost immediately to build a solvent advertising sales and circulation campaign. Vann saw the importance of having talented, industrious and skilled staff and technicians at the Courier. Vann and the Courier executives after him continued to hire skilled people that included 1920 William “Bill” Nunn Sr. as sports writer, and later city editor, then managing editor until he left in 1956; Earl V. Hord, lino-typist and office manager; Wendell Smith, W. Rollo Wilson, Chester Washington and Bill Nunn Jr. as sports writers; Charles “Teenie” Harris, Oceana Sockwell, Luther Johnson and Alex Rivera as photographers; Sam Milai, Jackie Ormes, Ollie Harrington and Wilbert Holloway as artists/cartoonists and columnists and reporters Frank Bolden, John L. Clark, George Schuyler, J.A. Rogers, Jesse O. Thomas, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Julia Bumry-Jones, Toki Johnson, Chappy Gardner, Bernice Dutrieulle-Shelton, Jack Cooper, George Barbour and A. B. Rice. Another important hire was P.L. Prattis from Chicago in 1935.
Prattis was an experienced editor serving as president of the social magazine, Heebie Jeebie before coming to Pittsburgh as city editor and was promoted to executive editor after Vann’s death in 1940, he became Editor in 1956, after Nunn Sr., left, which he remained until his retirement in 1962.
The 1920s was a major turning point for the Courier. Vann had become politically active as a city solicitor and political committeeman. He used his influence on the paper to espouse a greater political piece of the pie for African- Americans. Because of his talented staff he was able to devote more time to political activism and his legal career. But one major event was the building of the Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Company plant at 2628 Centre Ave., in the Hill District, in 1929. The facility cost $104,000 and included a state-of-the-art printing press able to produce 35,000 copies of the Courier per day. The new plant and its press helped to increase the circulation of the paper from 55,000 to more than 100,000 within a few years. It would reach a peak of between 350,000 to 480,000 in the 1940s.
The Pittsburgh Courier as the leading African-American weekly paper covered the major stories affecting Blacks including: the Dyer anti-lynching bill proposed in Congress in 1922. The brutal, inhuman act of lynching, hanging and other atrocities by Whites was picked up by the Courier early and lasted well into the 1940s. The Scottsboro Boys case was another major story that made an impact on all of Black America. The Courier vigorously reported on this trial and its various appeals for almost a decade.
In the mid 1930s the Courier began to follow the career of boxer Joe Louis. Sportswriters Chester Washington and Bill Nunn Sr., reported from Louis’ training camps and hosted Louis on his many visits to Courier offices.
Vann more than any other politico was responsible for the shift of African-American political party allegiance from Republican to the Democratic Party. He spoke in Cleveland in 1932 making the famous phrase “Negroes have changed their political philosophy….I see millions of Negroes turning the pictures of Abraham Lincoln to the wall. This year I see Negroes voting a Democratic ticket.”
As a result Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Democrat was elected president of the United States.
Vann asked Roosevelt to establish a Black combat unit of the U.S. Army commanded by an African-American. Roosevelt was slow to respond but he did appoint Benjamin O. Davis Sr. as the first African-American general in the U.S. Army. After Vann’s death in 1940 the paper continued under the leadership of his wife Jesse Vann who kept in place Lewis on the business side and Nunn Sr. on the editorial side.
In 1942 the Courier initiated the Double V campaign—for victory at home over discrimination and victory abroad over the Axis powers. This led a big boost in the papers’ circulation.
The use of the brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was the key to the circulation boost. They distributed the paper throughout the southern states where the majority of Blacks still lived during this era.
By World War II, the Courier had a circulation of more than 250,000, had offices in 14 cities and published eastern midwest and west coast editions. Vann was determined to have the Courier become a vehicle for Black political empowerment and economic and cultural improvement.
The Courier had correspondents that covered events, or did investigative reporting of civil rights activities during the 1950s and ‘60s. Alex Rivera, Prattis, Evelyn Cunningham and others covered the southern campaign. Edna Chapelle (McKenzie) and others conducted investigative reporting of western Pennsylvania communities and businesses that had discriminatory practices and policies, many in Pittsburgh.
The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement were the key issues of the ‘60s. Its team of cartoonist and artists made illustrated commentary, and the paper posted photographs and bios’ of U.S. soldiers and the deaths of local men.
The Courier continues to cover the major stories that affect Blacks lives. The current campaign is to stop the senseless violence in the streets that is taking so many Black males’ lives.
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