The paper was founded by Edwin Nathaniel Harleston, who worked as a guard at the H. J. Heinz Company food packing plant in Pittsburgh.

[5] In 1909, Edward Penman, Hepburn Carter, Scott Wood Jr., and Harvey Tanner joined Harleston to run the paper, although they did not contribute financially.

[7] During the summer, the paper was expanded from four to eight pages, but struggled with circulation and financial solvency due to a small market and lack of interested advertisers.

In the early 1910s, a staff of four (Vann, a secretary, a sports editor, and an errand boy who also proof-read and handled mail) operated from a spare room above a funeral parlor in the Hill District.

[10] As editor, Vann wrote editorials encouraging readers to only patronize business that paid for advertisements in the Courier and ran contests to attempt to increase circulation.

[16] In addition to Schuyler's contributions, the paper also ran special features by writers such as Joel Augustus Rogers and serialized novels, such as Walter Francis White's Fire in the Flint.

[17] Sports was well covered by writers including Chester L. Washington, who began writing for the paper while still in high school in Pittsburgh, Wendell Smith,[18] and Cumberland Posey, son of one of the first investors.

Most significantly, the paper extensively covered the injustices on African Americans perpetrated by the Pullman Company and supported the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

[20] Vann wrote to gain support for causes such as improved housing conditions in the Hill District, better education for black students, and equal employment and union opportunities.

Du Bois over issues such as President Calvin Coolidge's grants of clemency to black soldiers involved in the Houston Riot[22] and Vann's allegations that James Weldon Johnson embezzled money for personal use from the NAACP and the Garland Fund.

Vann saw this as an achievable step on the path to integration of the military, but the NAACP leadership, primarily Walter White, publicly disagreed with this half-measure, despite the protests of Thurgood Marshall.

[27] By 1928, the Courier's four editions (local, northern, eastern, and southern) were distributed in all 48 states and internationally, and by 1938, the paper was the largest American black weekly, with a circulation of 250,000.

Bolden was one of only two African American war correspondents accepted, and became a nationally recognized journalist, in addition to being city editor of the Courier from 1956 until 1962.

[32] The Courier's decline can be attributed in large part to advances during the Civil Rights Movement, because as white publications included more African American news, circulation steadily fell.

[1] In 1947, Prattis was unanimously granted membership in the US Senate and House press galleries by the executive committee of the Periodical Correspondents Association.

The first strip of note was Sunny Boy Sam, originally by Wilbert Holloway,[37] which launched in 1928 and continued past the demise of the Courier.