Pennsylvania Digital Newspaper Project

12/02/2022

Exciting news! We have soft serve ice cream!! Vanilla, Chocolate and Twist available in one size for now in a cone or a dish. You can add sprinkles or crumbled Oreo topping.

01/08/2020

https://allthingsliberty.com/2019/10/revolutionary-networks-the-business-and-politics-of-printing-the-news-1763-1789/

Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789 by Joseph M. Adelman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) An explosion of new...

07/06/2016

the Pennsylvania Evening Post publishes the full text of the Declaration of Independence for the first time.

07/02/2016

A brief media chronology of America’s first big story.

02/18/2015

"My husband’s death meant that I was faced with making one of the greatest decisions of my life: whether to remain at home or to accept the responsibility of managing the newspaper business he had left—and I chose the latter. I have never regretted my choice. By not pretending to know more than I really did, I was able to gain the cooperation of the employees. Together we have been able to carry on successfully."
--Mrs. Jessie Vann, quote from transcript of radio program, “This I Believe,” c1950,

Jessie Matthews was born in 1895 near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Her grandparents, Edward and Annie Matthews, were involved in the Underground Railroad and her father and two of his brothers served in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. By the time Jessie was 5, both of her parents had died and her childhood was one of being shuttled back and forth between relatives who seemed to have little affection for or interest in her.

Jessie received training as a teacher and worked as such for a while. In 1915 she married Robert L. Vann, who for three years had been the publisher and editor of The Pittsburgh Courier. The couple became fixtures in Pittsburgh African American society and remained so for decades, with Mrs. Vann active in the Hill District YWCA as well as many other ladies’ social and civic organizations.

The unexpected death of Robert Vann in 1940 ended a marriage of 25 years and put his widow at the helm of what was then the most influential African American Newspaper in the United States. She proved to be a keenly effective editor and business woman, not only keeping the quality of the paper at its peak but also expanding its circulation until readership hit an all-time high of 400,00 nationwide. Mrs. Vann was always quick to give credit to the staff of the paper that remained loyal to the cause after her husband had passed but her own skills were a necessary part of the equation for keeping The Courier viable.

The Courier was the only African American newspaper that supported Eisenhower for his presidential bid and, as president, Dwight D. Eisenhower sought Mrs. Vann’s help and involvement on several occasions. In 1944 he sent her as the United States delegate to the inauguration of President William Tubman in Liberia—an event at which she was the only female guest. In 1953, Vann was made a member of the International Development Advisory Board. He also asked her to serve as an alternate delegate to the United Nations but Vann felt this would take too much of her time away from her duties with The Courier.

Vann’s national obligations did not take away from her civic and civil rights work closer to home. She served on the board of directors for the NAACP for almost twenty years and was an active director of the local branch of the Urban League for over thirty years. She was a charter member of the Pittsburgh branch of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, a board member for both Virginia Union University at Richmond, Virginia and Storer College at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.

In 1953 Mrs. Vann went to Florida on a business trip and was surprised to discover that she was the guest of honor on the popular television show, “This Is Your Life.” Three years later, she was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania.

Mrs. Vann retired from her position at The Courier in 1965. She continued her board and membership responsibilities until her death in 1967. The newspaper, The Washington Afro-American, noted that Mrs. Vann was one of several prominent African American newspaper publishers who died in 1967, the others being Dr. Carl J. Murphy, chairman of the Afro-American Newspapers, Claude Barnett, Founder of the Associated Negro Press news agency and Thomas W. Young, editor and publisher of the Norfolk Journal and Guide. Among many condolences was a telegram from President Lyndon B. Johnson which was read at her funeral mass.

Mrs. Vann is at rest with her husband in their mausoleum in Section 21 of The Homewood Cemetery.

02/18/2015

“Edna McKenzie, who died last week at 81, was the kind of journalist and historian that other journalists and historians write books about. To call her a trailblazer is almost to minimize her influence.” –“McKenzie’s Mission; The journalist made history before studying it,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 5, 2005

Edna Chapelle McKenzie was born in Grindstone, Fayette County in 1923. One of seven children, her father was an itinerant African American Methodist Minister. Soon after she graduated from high school, McKenzie worked for The Los Angeles Tribune, a small and rather seedy tabloid that used sensationalism to sell papers.

Upon returning to Pennsylvania, McKenzie was hired as a typist for Julia Bumry Jones, a well-liked but ailing society page editor at The Pittsburgh Courier. When Jones passed away in 1945, McKenzie took over her column, “Talk O' Town,” but soon wearied of writing about weddings and parties. She eventually became the first woman reporter at the Tribune to work the “hard news” stories which, in the 1940s and 1950s, could be exceptionally brutal. McKenzie contributed extensively the investigation and reporting of lynchings across the country. After the war, she went undercover to visit segregated restaurants across Western Pennsylvania in order to write about what she experienced upon entering and trying to be served. The reporter who had written so extensively about murders described the experience as “worse than fighting a war.”

McKenzie’s tenure as a reporter made her a vocal advocate for the black press and also moved her to continue her education. She received a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in fine arts (she was an accomplished contralto) from The University of Pittsburgh. In 1973 she became the first African American woman to receive a Doctorate at Pitt, her degree being in History. She was a thorough and incisive historian whose dissertation, “Self Hire Among Slaves, 1820-1860,” challenged canonical interpretations of slavery by presenting evidence of economic independence among blacks whose legal status was that of slave. She taught history at the Community College of Allegheny County and was chair of the Department of Black, Minority and Ethnic Studies at CCAC for over 20 years

McKenzie was active and visible both during her teaching career and afterwards, during her retirement. She served on many executive committees, including those for the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. She was a frequent attendee at the many public meetings, scholarly seminars and other events to be found in the city. She also contributed columns and editorials to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Edna McKenzie succumbed to cancer in 2005 at the age of 81. She is at rest in Section 20 of The Homewood Cemetery.

02/13/2015

Under Lewis’ control, The Pittsburgh Courier became the most widely circulated African American newspaper in the country.

“They laid ‘Little Chief’ to rest in serene Homewood Cemetery Thursday—directly opposite the mausoleum where his teammate, ‘Big Chief’ Robert L. Vann lies in repose—after a host of notables … had paid a reverent tribute to one of American’s truly great newspaper men, Ira F. Lewis. ("Courier President Is Laid to Rest," Pittsburgh Courier, September 11, 1948)

Ira Foster Lewis was born in Lexington, North Carolina in 1884. The grandson of a slave, Lewis’ formal education was limited and included one year of college at the Biddle Institute. He left the South before WWI and came to Pittsburgh where he worked a variety of jobs, including that of a waiter and also as a stenographer. In 1914, he was hired by Robert Vann, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, as a Sports Writer. Lewis had an encyclopedic knowledge of all sports, which served him well in this position, but he also was a deft and effective businessman who turned his attention to making the fledgling paper solvent. Vann and Lewis turned out to be a newspaper Dream Team of sorts. Both brought different skills to the same goal: a highly circulated, well written African American Newspaper that would forward a progressive social agenda for African American citizens not just in Pittsburgh but nationwide. It wasn’t long before Vann and Lewis were being referred to—respectfully—as “Big Chief and Little Chief.”

Their partnership was broken upon Vann’s untimely death in 1940, at which point Lewis stepped into Vann’s place as executive editor. Under Lewis’ control, The Pittsburgh Courier became the most widely circulated African American newspaper in the country.

The importance of the Courier was only enhanced by WWII, a conflict in which thousands of African Americans would risk, and even give, their lives. In 1944, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Martin, named Lewis to the Pennsylvania Post War Planning Commission. Lewis was also invited to the White House, first by President Franklin Roosevelt and then by President Truman to act as an advisor as an advisor on the well-being of African Americans within the American Armed forces. His meeting with Truman was the beginning of a friendship that would last until Lewis’ death, despite the fact Lewis had led an unsuccessful campaign in the Courier to defeat Truman’s presidential bid.

During WWII, The Pittsburgh Courier started the Double V Campaign, a campaign championed by Lewis. Premiering in 1942, the Double V Campaign demanded full citizenship rights for African Americans who were fighting in the war. The Courier produced and printed articles, studies and editorials in support of Double V, creating a groundswell of support that brought other African American newspapers into the project.

Concurrent with Lewis’ influential war work were his efforts to integrate Major League Baseball. Having started as a sports writer, Lewis’s love of all sports never left him. It is a speech he gave in 1943 to owners of both National and American league teams that moved the High Commissioner of the leagues to officially declare no major league club could officially bar African Americans from playing in the leagues. This was the crack in the door through Jackie Robinson would gain entry to The Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Lewis received many accolades both during and after his life, including honorary degrees from Wilberforce University and Johnson C. Smith University. He served on the National Advisory Committee for the United Negro College Fund and was twice invited to address the Harvard University School of Journalism. Shortly before his death he was made a Master Mason by the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge of Prince Hall Masons.

Lewis suffered a massive heart attack while in New York City in 1948. He died at the age of 64 and is at rest in Section 12-2 of The Homewood Cemetery.

02/10/2015

Percival Leroy (P.L.) Prattis was born in Philadelphia in 1895. He would attend The Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia, and would graduate in 1916 from the Ferris Institute, a preparatory academy for low income children in Big Rapids, Michigan.

Prattis was a Battalion Sergeant Major, headquartered in the Company 813 Pioneer Infantry during World War I. He was stationed in France from September 15, 1918 to July 13, 1919, and was honorably discharged from his duties on July 23, 1919. That same year, he would take his first editorial job at a newspaper in Michigan.

By the time Prattis took the editorial helm of The Pittsburgh Courier in 1936, he had spent over 15 years working at other African American newspapers, including The Chicago Defender, and The Associated Negro Press. And by the time he did join the Courier, it had surpassed these and other publications to become the leading African American newspaper of its day with a coast to coast circulation of over 250,000.

Prattis was not solely an editor for the Courier. As a reporter he traveled far and wide, covering stories overseas. During WWII, he was dispatched to both the European and Pacific fronts covering the African American Armed Forces. After the war, he followed stories in both Europe and the Middle East.

Prattis made history in 1947 when he was unanimously granted membership in the Senate and House press galleries by the executive committee of the Periodical Correspondents Association, thus making him the first African American journalist admitted to the galleries. Being able to directly observe Congress allowed Prattis to report on government proceedings with firsthand knowledge of events. Such proximity became crucial as post war America entered the turbulent Civil Rights era.

Promotion to managing editor of The Courier followed in 1948 and he held that position until 1956 when was named executive editor of the Pittsburgh Courier. Prattis retired from the Courier in 1965 after it was bought by The Courier’s longtime competitor, the Chicago Defender.

Prattis led a very active life after retirement, giving his time and talents to many local causes, including The Federation of Social Agencies of Allegheny County and The Urban League. Many awards followed his civic work, culminating in 1965, when he was named, “Master of Men” by the YMCA of the State of Pennsylvania. Prattis died February 29, 1980 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania. In 2006, Prattis' daughter, Patricia Prattis Jennings, donated her father's papers to the University of Pittsburgh where they are available for research at the ULS Archives Service Center. An extensive article about Prattis and his career was featured in the Fall, 2014 issue of Western Pennsylvania History Magazine. He and his wife are at rest in section 12-2 of The Homewood Cemetery.

02/05/2015

The handsome gentleman in these photos was usually behind a camera. Charles “Teenie” Harris was born in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1908. His mother and an older brother opened and operated The Masio Hotel, a boarding home which was next door to Paramount Club, owned by influential impresario and numbers man, Gus Greenlee. Harris would work as a chauffeur for his brother Woogie Harris, who ran numbers with Greenlee, until the mid-thirties. Interested in photography from an early age, Harris had his own camera by the time he was in his 20s and, in 1937, he opened a photography studio at 2128 Centre Avenue in the Hill District. His work was good enough that he had been offered a job with The Pittsburgh Courier as a staff photographer the year before but declined the offer due to the low salary. Harris ran his studio, frequently freelancing for The Courier until becoming an official staff photographer for the paper in 1941 at a salary of $35 per week.

As a photographer for the influential African American paper, Harris would spend thirty nine years chronicling Pittsburgh’s African American community. His skill at getting the right shot on the first try earned him the nickname, “One Shot,” and Harris took over 80,000 shots during the four decades of his career. His photographs captured international dignitaries, children’s home Christmas parties, the stars of Pittsburgh’s great Negro League baseball teams, spelling bee winners, Gold Star Mothers, civil rights activists and his own children. The range of his subject matter within the African American community of Pittsburgh coupled with the length of his career resulted in a depth of documentation not found in other African American communities of the same eras. Harris retired from The Courier around 1976, occasionally freelancing for the paper for the next seven years. In his later years his work was widely recognized with various accolades and awards, including the 1997 George Polk Career Award in Journalism from Long Island University and a resolution from The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission honoring Harris’s “Outstanding contribution…to the documentation of the African American Community in Pittsburgh.”

Harris died in 1998 and is buried with his wife, Elsa, in Section 12-2 of The Homewood Cemetery. His collection of negatives was purchased from his estate in 2001 by The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since acquiring the collection, the museum has scanned and cataloged over 60,000 images and has worked with the African American community of Pittsburgh for assistance in identifying the people and events seen in the collection. The Homewood Cemetery Historical fund, in partnership with The Teenie Harris Archive, will feature at least one image from the Archive each day in February in celebration of African American History Month.
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02/05/2015

“’When you find a person who's completely dedicated to a cause,’ [Dr. Edna B.]McKenzie said, "there's a charisma there. She moved well in all circles. There's no question that she was accepted everywhere as a leader.’”—“Daisy Lampkin was a dynamo for change.” Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Monday, February 02, 1998.

Mentor to Thurgood Marshall and known nationwide as “Mrs. N.A.A.C.P.,” Mrs. Daisy Lampkin was another major figure in the African American community with strong ties to The Pittsburgh Courier.

Born in Washington D.C. in 1883, Daisy Adams matriculated in that district’s public school system and relocated to Pittsburgh in 1909. In 1912 she married William Lampkin, a restauranteur. It was at this time that she began to work in the areas of racial/social justice and one of her first causes was that of women’s suffrage. Her work with other women of color around the issue of suffrage and within consumer protest groups tapped a natural skill at leadership. She became active in various civic organizations, befriending other activists both locally and across the country, including Mary McLeod Bethune.

1912 was also significant in that it marked her formal involvement with The Courier. That year Lampkin won an award for selling the most subscriptions to The Courier and when the paper could not pay her the cash prize advertised, she suggested they make her a stockholder. By 1929 Lampkin was named vice-president (serving concurrently as editor, writer and executive) of the Pittsburgh Courier, which provided her a bully pulpit to organize around social justice causes and events.

In 1930, Lampkin was tapped to be the first field secretary for the NAACP. Within two years, her skill at fundraising and organizing won her a promotion from regional field secretary to national field secretary. It was at this time that she put much of her effort behind Anti-Lynching work, both working for national anti-lynching legislation and organizing African American women around the cause.

Lampkin’s influence was just as important behind the scenes. Thurgood Marshall credits Lampkin with suggesting he move to New York City to be closer to the National Headquarters of the NAACP in 1938. Marshall would go on to become a member of the association’s Legal Defense Committee and to argue the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954.

Lampkin’s tireless travel and work schedule took its toll on her health as she grew older. While campaigning for the NAACP in October of 1964, Lampkin suffered a stroke. She was slated to receive the first Eleanor Roosevelt-Mary McLeod Bethune World Citizenship award for her dedication to racial and gender equality that December but, too frail to travel to New York City, the award was accepted on her behalf by a young woman with whom Lampkin had become close, singer Lena Horne. Mrs. Lampkin passed away on March 10, 1965.

On August 9, 1983, Lampkin became the first African American woman to be honored with a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker, marking where she and her husband lived on Webster Avenue.

02/05/2015

“The name of Robert L. Vann is perhaps better known than that of any other Negro. His political sagacity, his fearless courage in following the path of his own convictions and his never-ending fight for the rights of his people, which dominated his every thought and action, had become legendary.” --“Courier Editor Succumbs Fighting: Passes in Sleep at Local Hospital,” The Pittsburgh Courier, November 2, 1940.

To fully appreciate the reach of Teenie Harris’ photographs, one must understand the paper for which he worked. And no discussion of The Pittsburgh Courier can take place without acknowledgement of its longtime publisher, Robert Lee Vann.

Vann was born in 1879 in Ahoskie, North Carolina. He was the valedictorian of his class at The Waters Training School in Winton North Carolina and went on to study at both Wayland Academy and Virginia Union University. Vann relocated to Pittsburgh sometime after 1903, graduating from the Law School of The Western University of Pennsylvania (now The University of Pittsburgh) in 1909, passing the bar exam that same year.

The Pittsburgh Courier had been in publication since 1907 and was, from the start, an African American publication. Vann served at the paper’s legal counsel starting in 1910 and soon took over operations, serving as editor, publisher and treasurer as well as continuing his work as its legal counsel. He continued his work as a lawyer concurrent with his responsibilities as the Courier’s editor and publisher. The obituary for him that ran in The Courier described him as representing over sixty clients who had been charged with homicide, none of whom were ever convicted of a first degree offense. [“Courier Editor Succumbs Fighting: Passes in Sleep at Local Hospital,” The Pittsburgh Courier, November 2, 1940.]

Under Vann’s management, The Courier thrived. The paper provided a variety of resources to empower the African American community—columns devoted to financial advice, a recurring feature, “Your History,” that unearthed significant stories of historical African American figures and events, and investigative reporting, such as an in-depth examination of how African American soldiers were treated by the military during WWI. The Courier endorsed African American organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People both locally and at the national level. Vann’s paper closely followed the careers of black athletes of the day, including Joe Lewis and Jesse Owen, an angle that brought in (and kept) readers by the scores. By the 1930s, The Pittsburgh Courier had a reader base of over 200,000 and was distributed coast to coast.

In 1932 Vann used his paper to urge African American voters to support Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate for President. Vann’s influence was recognized in 1933 when he was appointed Special Assistant to the United States Attorney General. Vann’s appointment was met with an institutional cold shoulder and, despite his title, it’s unclear if the Attorney General at the time ever met with Vann. Vann left his appointment in 1935 to return to overseeing The Courier.

Vann’s death in October of 1940 elicited condolences from political figures, civil rights activists, leaders in the world of sports, artists, and other newspapers of note. Among these many accolades was the naming of the US Liberty Ship, the S.S. Robert L. Vann, which launched in 1943.
Robert Vann and his wife, Jessie Vann, occupy a private art-deco mausoleum in Section 21 of The Homewood Cemetery. The mausoleum contains a small medieval style stained glass window, the design of which features a Gutenberg-style press.

08/28/2014

That's all folks!
The Pennsylvania Digital Newspaper Project comes to the end of its NEH grant funding on August 31.
Over the past six years (2008-2014) the project has digitized 88 titles amounting to 365,051 newspaper pages representing 44 cities.
All this content on Chronicling America continues to be a great resource for genealogists and historians.
This page, however, will no longer be maintained.