Documentary recounts history of a leading black newspaper

Robert Lavelle will never forget his first day at The Pittsburgh Courier. It was September,… Robert Lavelle will never forget his first day at The Pittsburgh Courier. It was September, 24, 1935, the day black boxer Joe Louis knocked out the heavyweight champion, Max Baer. People from across the country began calling The Courier requesting copies of its match coverage. The Courier, a Hill District-based paper that ran from 1907 to 1965, was one of the most influential black newspapers in the history of the United States. Tonight, Pitt alumnus Kenneth Love will unveil his documentary about the paper in a private reception Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and other University officials are expected to attend. The documentary, “The Pittsburgh Courier, 1907-1965,” tells the story of the paper using vintage images and narration from several of the newspaper’s former editors and reporters, including Pitt alumnus Lavelle. “The Pittsburgh Courier meant everything to me,” Lavelle said. “It took me out of a dishwasher job. I wanted to be the best that I could be at The Courier so one day I could be one of those guys that was running the paper.” Lavelle flashed back to his first “day” at The Courier. While some of the workers were receiving an influx of callers, the editors were delaying production, trying to work a picture from the historical boxing match into the paper. Lavelle spent hours answering phone calls, until the staff went to the YMCA across the street to get four hours of sleep. Lavelle came back to spend several more hours wrapping newspapers, which The Courier would ship across the country. At 19-years-old, Lavelle worked a 27-hour day. He worked 80 hours his first week, and he raked in $10 for his labor. Lavelle would eventually move from the mail room and office to the accounting department during his 21-year career. During World War II, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, during which time The Courier launched the “Double V” Campaign. The “Double V” Campaign, which stood for “Democracy: Victory at Home, Victory Abroad,” pushed for civil rights for blacks. The goal was to defeat Adolph Hitler and Jim Crow laws. This eventually sparked an investigation by then-F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, who wanted to shut the paper down and charge some of its workers with sedition. “The paper had two functions,” Pitt professor Laurence Glasco said. “One function was to protest discrimination, segregation, injustices, and the other function was to highlight and feature the positives that were going on inside of the community.” The Pittsburgh Courier had a reputation for causing controversy. Pittsburgh native Edwin Nathaniel Harleston, a guard at the H.J. Heinz food packing plant, founded The Courier in 1907 during an era dominated by white media and segregation. Robert L. Vann, the first black graduate of the Pitt’s law school, helped improve The Courier after becoming the editor, publisher, treasurer and legal counsel in 1910. Pitt alumnus Frank Bolden began working at The Courier several decades later, in the 1930s. He worked as a stringer while he was attending Pitt and eventually became known as one of the first two black war correspondents. “Frank always said that without The Courier, he would never have had the experiences that he did during WWII as a war correspondent,” his wife, Nancy Bolden, said. “He was always extremely grateful for The Courier.” Bolden interviewed former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, leader of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin and General Chiang Kai-shek of China and was a houseguest of Mahatma Gandhi. In the torrid jungles of Burma, Bolden wrote about the black engineering troops who died working on the Burma Road. He denounced claims that black people would flee combat while covering soldiers in Italy. Bolden’s most famous series traced the complete histories of eight prominent black families who came to the country in 1728 by tracking down all living relatives and telling their stories. Bolden worked in a time when Pittsburgh, like most of the nation, was marked by segregation. Blacks could not dine Downtown, try on clothes Downtown, or sit in the same seating area in theaters. There was no media outlet for the black community, and the white newspapers did not shed any positive light on blacks, Glasco said. “Nationally this period is known as the nadir period, meaning that it was low point in history,” Glasco said. “It was a period of greatest racial violence. Lynching, Jim Crow laws were put in full effect and the Supreme Court ruling on segregation.” The Courier, which would reach more than 250,000 people in 14 cities, pushed for full racial integration prior to World War II, giving ample coverage to segregated black men in the military. One of the first stories was of a black mess attendant who voluntarily defended the battleship Arizona without machine gun training. The Courier also crusaded against the American Red Cross ban on blood donations from black people. Called the “Race Blood Myth,” the paper often placed a series of blood ban stories on its front page. The paper’s coverage of wider, national events caught the attention of American presidents. Lyndon B. Johnson’s favorite cartoon, which hung in the Oval Office, was said to be one by The Courier’s Sam Milai. Milai drew several cartoons about Johnson, which are now on display in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. But it was the paper’s local coverage of church events, parties and nightclubs that won Hill District residents’ loyalty. Wylie Avenue, the predominately black neighborhood of the Hill District, had a lively nightlife. The Hill District glory days were from the 1930s to 1950s, and reporters such as Bolden covered the Hill that never seemed to go to bed. Self-taught photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris, who became a legend in the journalism community, shot more than 80,000 pictures of the Wylie Avenue scene when whites and blacks were dressing up and flooding the clubs. But The Courier later collapsed financially. It reemerged and continues to live on today in the form of the New Pittsburgh Courier.