The newspaper takes its name from its original location one block east of Amsterdam Avenue, at West 65th Street and Broadway.

[citation needed] An investment of US$10 in 1909 (equivalent to $339 in 2023) turned the Amsterdam News into one of New York's largest and most influential Black-owned-and-operated business institutions, and one of the nation's most prominent ethnic publications.

[4][5] It was later reported that James Henry Anderson published the first copy: "...with a dream in mind, $10 in his pocket, six sheets of paper and two pencils.

[4] With the spread of Blacks to Harlem and the growing success of the paper, Anderson moved the Amsterdam News uptown to 17 West 135th Street in 1910.

In the early 1940s, the paper relocated to its present headquarters at 2340 Eighth Avenue (also known in Harlem as Frederick Douglass Boulevard).

The strike ended on December 24, 1935, when the paper's bankruptcy receiver Laurence H. Axman, Newspaper Guild president Carl Randau, and businessmen Dr. C. B. Powell and Dr. Phillip M. H. Savory reached an agreement that saw the locked-out employees receive a 10% wage increase, a five-day, 40-hour work week, two weeks of annual vacation time, three-month dismissal notices for employees with more than 10 years of service, the establishment of a guild shop, and the removal of strike-breaking staff.

[citation needed] On May 1, 1971, Dr. C. B. Powell announced his retirement and sold the Amsterdam News to the AmNews Corporation, its present owner.

[citation needed] In August 1982, Wilbert A. Tatum, chairman of the AmNews Corporation's board of directors and the paper's editor-in-chief, became publisher and chief executive officer.

This expanded thrust has produced considerable interest and readership from all sectors of the local, national and international communities.