Black-Owned by Char Adams

The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore

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

In Black-Owned, Char Adams celebrates the living history of Black bookstores. Packed with stories of activism, espionage, violence, community, and perseverance, Black-Owned starts with the first Black-owned bookstore, which an abolitionist opened in New York in 1834, and after the bookshop’s violent demise, Black book-lovers carried on its cause. In the twentieth century, civil rights and Black Power activists sparked a nationwide Black bookstore boom. Malcolm X gave speeches in front of the National Memorial African Book Store in Harlem—a place dubbed “Speakers’ Corner”—and later, Black bookstores became targets of FBI agents, police, and racist vigilantes. Still, stores continued to fuel Black political movements.

Amid these struggles, bookshops were also places of celebration: Eartha Kitt and Langston Hughes held autograph parties at their local Black-owned bookstores. Maya Angelou became the face of National Black Bookstore Week. And today, a new generation of Black activists is joining the radical bookstore tradition, with rapper Noname opening her Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles and several stores making national headlines when overwhelmed by demand during the Black Lives Matter era. As Adams makes clear, in an age of increasing repression, Black bookstores are needed now more than ever.

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

Author Info:

Char Adams is a former reporter for NBC News and People, and her writing on race and identity has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, Oprah Daily, Vice, Teen Vogue, and Bustle. She hosted COVID University New York, one of the first podcasts to chronicle the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. She is a proud Philadelphia native and now lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.