African-American Newspapers

As a child, I remember seeing the Pittsburgh Courier on racks in grocery stores and drugstores.  Founded in 1907, the Courier has quite a pedigree, but it is by no means the oldest African-American publication.  That distinction belongs to a weekly called Freedom's Journal.

Freedom's Journal was owned, written, edited, and otherwise operated by free blacks in New York.  It lasted for only two years.  But three decades after its birth, there were over 40 black-owned and -operated newspapers in the United States.







In 2018, PBS ran a documentary on the Courier, as a premier example of African-American newspapers.  Take a look at the video here.