Thread by @JoshClarkDavis

Going to do a thread on the Black-owned bookstores for #independentbookstoreday.

The history of Black bookstores are closely connected to radical politics. Abolitionist David Ruggles was the first African American to start a bookstore, in lower Manhattan in the early 1830s. 1/

Here's an announcement for a cooperatively-owned Black bookstore at Howard University from 1930. 2/

#IndependentBookstoreDay

We really don't know a lot about African American bookstores in the early 20th century. The best history of that period is Alisha Knight's essay in the Oxford anthology "U.S. Popular Print Culture, 1860-1920." /3

#IndependentBookstoreDay

A lot of Black booksellers were connected to churches + sold directly to churchgoers by mail order. The National Baptist Convention founded the National Baptist Publishing Board in 1896 + was said to have millions in sales. /4 #IndependentBookstoreDay (credit: NMAAHC)

Lewis Michaux was one of the first prominent Black bookstore owners in the 20th century, and he started by selling books from a push cart in Harlem. Here he is in 1943. /5

#IndependentBookstoreDay

I love this review by Langston Hughes of Black bookstores in Harlem, published in 1953 in the Chicago Defender. /6

#IndependentBookstoreDay

One of the stores that Hughes highlighted was the Frederick Douglass Book Center, operated by Richard B. Moore, a Barbadian labor activist, socialist, and African Blood Brotherhood member in Harlem. /7

#IndependentBookstoreDay

Another Black bookseller was the historian J.A. Rogers, who commissioned salespeople to sell his books door-to-door. One salesperson was African American historian Lorenzo Green, who detailed his work in Selling Black History for Carter G. Woodson. /8

#IndependentBookstoreDay

Through the early '60s, it was hugely difficult for African Americans to open bookstores + for Black writers to simply get published. Here's J.A. Rogers lamenting in 1961, "Books on the Negro...take a back seat." /9

#IndependentBookstoreDay

Through the early '60s, Lewis Michaux's National African Memorial Bookshop on 125th Street in Harlem was by far the most famous in the country. Michaux was close with Malcolm X, who regularly visited the store and hosted rallies outside. /10

#IndependentBookstoreDay

The number of Black bookstore grew exponentially in the Black Power era, from a couple dozen to roughly 75 to 100 Black stores by the early '70s. Earl Caldwell wrote in the NY Times in 1969 of "a surge of interest among Negroes in Black literature." /11

#IndependentBookstoreDay

A whole new generation of Black Power bookstores opened in the '60s like Ed Vaughn's store in Detroit, which Detroit Police partly blamed for the 1967 riots and retaliated by vandalizing + attacked his store. (Story from Publishers Weekly, 08/27/67) /12

#IndependentBookstoreDay

Another major store was Drum and Spear in DC in 1968, opened by civil rights veterans of SNCC and local DC organizations. Here's a picture of Judy Richardson and Tony Gittens from a Washington Post piece from 1968. /13

#IndependentBookstoreDay

Drum and Spear's 1971 Catalog. D&S also distributed + even started publishing books, including a Palestinian poetry collection, both in DC + in Tanzania with the support of Julius Nyerere. See Seth Markle's A Motorcycle on Hell Run for more on this. /14

#IndependentBookstoreDay

A major West Coast store was Marcus Books owned by Julian + Raye Richardson, opened in the '60s first in SF + later in Oakland.

The Richardson family still operates Marcus Books today, making it the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the country./15

#IndependentBookstoreDay

In the era when Marvel created Black Panther, Marcus Books published The Adventures of Black Eldridge, a comic book that was *actually* about the Black Panther Party and Eldridge Cleaver. /16 #IndependentBookstoreDay

J. Edgar Hoover was so disturbed by Black bookstores that he ordered all FBI field offices in 1968 to conduct surveillance on the stores' owners, employees + customers and to track their transactions, which I wrote about here: theatlantic.com/politics/archi… /17
#IndependentBookstoreDay

The FBI spied for example on Una Mulzac, who opened Liberation Bookstore in Harlem. A labor radical + black nationalist, her father was famed Communist + 1st Black commander of a Merchant Marines ship, Hugh Mulzac. (Btw continuing thread even tho #IndependentBookstoreDay is over)

The FBI also spied on Paul Coates, who opened the Black Book after working w the Baltimore Black Panthers. Coates opened Black Classic Press in 1978, still operating today. Among his literary legacies are his son Ta-Nehisi Coates. Great interview here: huffpost.com/highline/artic… /19

Black Muslims have long sold books, as seen in stores like Dawud Hakim's shop in Philly (opened in the '60s) and Bilalian Books in LA in the '70s. Here's a great picture of the Nation of Islam's Temple #7 in Harlem and its store Books & Things (credit: NMAAHC). /20

Another religious group that sold books was Rev. Albert Cleage/Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman's Pan-African Orthodox Church aka Shrine of the Black Madonna that opened stores in the '60s-'70s in Detroit, Atlanta + Houston (credit: NMAAHC) Cleage was the father of writer Pearl Cleage. /21

Alfred + Bernice Ligon opened the Aquarian bookstore in LA in 1941 as a metaphysical/New Age shop but over time added many African American works. Ron Karenga held 1st meeting for US Organization there. Destroyed in the '92 uprising, the store rebuilt before closing in '94. /22

I love this cover of "Negro History in Paperbound Books," a 1969 catalog from the Bowker publishing trade group. Really speaks to Black readers' + bookstores' growing power in those years. The spread of affordable paperback in the 1960s-'70s was critical for Black bookstores. /23

Great ad for the Nyumba Ya Ujamaa/House of Cooperative Economics store that sold books, African art + clothing, run by Amiri Baraka's Committee for a Unified NewArk (CFUN), w/ a performance by Baltimore sax player Gary Bartz to welcome the Congress of Afrikan Peoples to town. /24

Black bookstores were hit hard in '70s by recession + decline of Black Power. By early '80s many had closed, but they rebounded in late '80s,early 90s, w/ renewed interest in Malcolm X, Afrocentricity, etc. Nelson George wrote of the "literary chitlin' circuit" in 1994. /25

A national leader in this revival was Clara Villarosa, who opened Hue-Man in Denver in 1984 + later moved it to Harlem. Villarosa pushed for greater recognition of Black bookstores from publishers and started an ABA Black bookstore caucus. Here she is in Ms. magazine in 1989. /26

Black bookstores faced big challenges in 2000s as bookstore chains + especially Amazon grew, and # of stores seriously declined. But they've rebounded again the last few years, as new stores have opened like @marclamonthill's @UncleBobbies in Philly and @MahoganyBooks in DC. /27

One of the true veterans of the ups + downs of the business in the last 5 decades is @NkiruBooks in Brooklyn, opened in 1976 by Leothy Miller Owens, then bought by @TalibKweli @MosDefOfficial in '98, and then reopened as online store by Kweli in 2016. villagevoice.com/2016/01/26/bro… /28

Some of my other favorite longstanding stores still going strong are @SankofaDC in DC, @EsoWon in LA, @marcusbooks in Oakland, and Everyone's Place here in Baltimore pictured below. /29

Check out my book "From Head Shops to Whole Foods" if you're interested in learning more about this history. And definitely check out one of the many stores operating across the country. Here's a list from industry experts @aalbc of all 112 of them! /30 aalbc.com/bookstores/lis…