Newspapers

Courier Helps Community

As more and more migrants from the South moved to Pittsburgh, the already-crowded Hill District, headquarters of the Courier, grew to the point of bursting. The deplorable conditions sparked Robert Vann to use his editorial voice to help his race. Robert Abbott had used the Chicago Defender to encourage thousands of blacks to journey North in search of a better life. Now that they had arrived, many of them in Pittsburgh, Vann tried to help them. He called for better housing--one of the plagues of turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh was its inadequate and crowded living conditions--and medical facilities. In addition, he supported education as a way to success. He used his paper to decry unfair hiring practices, police raids in black parts of town, and the poor depiction of blacks in mainstream white papers. He celebrated black achievements in sports, especially boxing, and in the military.

Crowded Housing Conditions in Pittsburgh, circa 1919