Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore
by Char Adams

Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore is the first full-length book on the history of Black-owned bookstores, and is an expansion of her important article, “Black-Owned Bookstores Have Always Been at the Center of the Resistance:”

When he wasn’t helping some 600 slaves escape through the Underground Railroad, David Ruggles was running a bookstore. In 1828, Ruggles opened a grocery store in New York City and later, as he became involved in the burgeoning abolitionist movement, opened a reading room and a bookstore for Black Americans. It was the nation’s first Black-owned bookstore.

NBC News reporter Char Adams writes a deeply compelling and rigorously reported history of Black political movements, told through the lens of Black-owned bookstores, which have been centers for organizing from abolition to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter.

Black-Owned celebrates small businesses and their role in community building—and in liberation. Journalist Char Adams reports on how Black bookstores have always been centerpieces of resistance. This is a story of activism, espionage, violence, and perseverance. The first Black-owned bookstore was opened by an abolitionist in 1834. In the twentieth century, civil rights and Black Power activists started a Black bookstore boom nationwide. Malcolm X would deliver speeches at the doorstep of the National Memorial African Book Store in Harlem, a place dubbed “Speakers Corner.” Soon many bookstores became targets of the FBI and local law enforcement alike.

Amid these struggles, bookshops were also places of celebration: Eartha Kitt and Langston Hughes held autograph parties at their local Black-owned bookstore, and Maya Angelou even became the face of National Black Bookstore Week. Now a new generation of Black activists are joining the radical bookstore tradition, with rapper Noname opening her Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles. And several stores made national headlines in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement. Today finds Black-owned bookshops in a position of strength—and as Adams will make clear, in an era of increasing division, their presence is needed now more than ever.

Populated by vibrant characters and written with cinematic flair, Black-Owned is an enlightening story of community, resistance, and joy.