Journalist Char Adams’s Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore (Tiny Reparations, Nov.), a history of Black-owned bookstores and their relation to Black-powered political movements from 1834 to the present, draws on archival research and new interviews with Black booksellers and family members, veterans of the 1960s Black liberation movement, and others. Adams talked with PW about what sparked her interest, the intersections between Black bookstores and Black culture, and Black bookstores’ advantages in a volatile marketplace.
You live in Dallas. Do you have any favorite Black-owned bookstores there?
There are two: Pan-African Connection and Black Lit. They’re both amazing stores with very different vibes. Black Lit is a Millennial’s dream: it feels very young and hip. Pan-African sells a lot of different things, from shea butter to African art to clothing. It feels very cultural and old-school. Pan-African is where you would get a taste of what some of those older Black-owned bookstores from the 1960s and ’70s were like. Unfortunately, Black Lit had to shut down temporarily. I hope it comes back, and it comes back stronger.
What intrigued you so much about Black bookstores?
It all started with a story I wrote for an online publication in 2019 that drew on the previous work of Joshua Clark Davis, who wrote an article in the Atlantic in 2018, “The FBI’s War on Black Bookstores.” He talked about how Black bookstores were surveilled in the 1960s. It was a very compelling, but cut-and-dried story. The journalist in me was curious, and I’m a nosy person as well. I wanted to know what that surveillance was like for the booksellers, what they thought about it, how it impacted their work. That led to my own article, and then this book. If there is one topic I would want to be engaged in for years, it’d be Black-owned bookstores. They’re so fascinating, and there are so many threads to pull about Black history and culture, and about capitalism and systems of oppression.
How did you decide which bookstores to include in your narrative?
The booksellers and stores from the 1960s and ’70s and a few decades before that I highlighted were some of the biggest names in Black bookselling in terms of impact and influence. Stores like Vaughn’s Bookstore [in Detroit] and Drum and Spear [in Washington, D.C.] were no-brainers. It wasn’t until later decades that the decision about who to include became tough, but certain names kept coming up during my conversations, like Eso Won [in Los Angeles] and MahoganyBooks [in the D.C. metro area]. If those stores were so important to the people I was talking to, they were worth looking into. For the more recent stores, I tapped into social networks and gathered information about stores that have made a big impact upon their communities, like Turning Page Bookshop [in Goose Creek, S.C.]. Influence doesn’t have to be this big grand thing. Some bookstores are just beloved by their customers, whether or not they make a profit.
What do you want people to know about you and your book?
I want people to know that I stutter: that is an important part of me. And Black-Owned isn’t just my doing. There are people who took me under their wing and shepherded me through this whole process, talked me through things, shared their passions with me. This was a communal effort: Paul Coates from Black Classic Press, documentary filmmaker and civil rights activist Judy Richardson, Joshua Davis, Clara Villarosa of the Hue-Man Experience bookstores in Denver and New York City and her daughters—there are so many people.
As this book makes clear, Black booksellers have always faced obstacles that other booksellers didn’t and still don’t have to deal with. What are your thoughts on the future of Black bookstores?
Black booksellers have always been super adaptable and, because they are so community oriented, they are surrounded by people who love them passionately and are invested in their survival. I think Black bookstores will continue to go through ebbs and flows, but I am very optimistic about their future.
