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The Southern Courier was a weekly newspaper published in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1965 to 1968, during the Civil Rights Movement. As one of a few newspapers to cover the movement with an emphasis on African-American communities in the South, it provided its readership with a comprehensive view of race relations and community and is considered an important source for historians.

In 1964, two students who had traveled to Mississippi to cover and assist in the Civil Rights Movement, Peter Cummings, a staff member of The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University's student newspaper, and Ellen Lake, formerly of the Crimson, were dismayed by the lack of coverage in the Southern papers and the sensationalist reporting of civil rights activities. They conceived of a newspaper that would cover issues not reported in the Southern newspapers, and often not in the national press.