Converting Microfilm scans to Word Document

Hi!  I'm working as a research assistant for my professor on a project that requires gathering pieces of fiction published in historic black newspapers during the Harlem Renaissance.  These newspapers are in PDF form, and are comprised of individual PDFs for each page of the paper. 

I'm wondering if there is an adobe program that will allow us to extract the text from these PDFs and convert it to a traditional word file.  I'm not looking for a copy of the newspaper page as it appears in the PDF (i.e. in columns and with headlines), but like a more modern word file appears (or like the text of this post reads...in paragraph form, and easier to read).

For example, if I have a PDF of a page of a newspaper that has a three-column short story on it, I would like to be able to convert that text into a word document quicker than transcribing it myself.  We are dealing with hundreds of files, so that would take ages.

Hopefully that makes sense!  These documents are searchable, so I feel like the software should be out there...I'm just not sure what it is. 

Thanks in advance!