Image: Baldwin & Co., New Orleans.

Search for your nearest Black-owned bookstore here and here.

Historical

The Afro-American: 50-year-old bookstore to close in Harlem.

Joshua Clark Davis:

• Civil Rights Activist, Poet, Bookseller: An Interview with Charlie Cobb. (See full transcript here.)
• Black-Owned Bookstores: Anchors of the Black Power Movement.
• Una Mulzac, Black Women Booksellers, and Pan-Africanism.
• Black Bookstores and the Black Power Movement: An Interview with Paul Coates.
• The FBI’s War on Black-Owned Bookstores: At the height of the Black Power movement, the Bureau focused on the unlikeliest of public enemies: black independent booksellers.

Drum and Spear Bookstore Site, African American Heritage Trail.

C. Gerald Fraser: Lewis Michaux, 92, Dies; Ran Bookstore in Harlem.

Ashawnta Jackson:

• The First Black-Owned Bookstore and the Fight for Freedom: Black abolitionist David Ruggles opened the first Black-owned bookstore in 1834, pointing the way to freedom—in more ways than one.
• Freedom Libraries and the Fight for Library Equity: Freedom libraries in the south provided Black residents with access to spaces and books, whether in church basements or private homes.

Douglas Martin: Una Mulzac, Bookseller With Passion for Black Politics, Dies at 88.

SNCC Digital Gateway: 1968: Drum and Spear Books founded.

Wikipedia:

• African-American bookstores.
• Présence Africaine.
• Young’s Book Exchange.

David Woo: Marcus Books, the Nation’s Oldest Black Bookstore.

Contemporary

AALBC: Only 54 Black Owned Bookstores Remain in America.

Tom Ambrose: Dismay as UK’s first specialist black bookshop forced to close: New Beacon Books in north London announces it will close and move online only after more than 55 years.

Tim Arango & Matt Stevens: California Today: A Cherished Black Bookstore in a Changing South L.A.

Kevin Armstrong: ‘We Always Rise.’ A Black-Owned Bookstore Navigates the Pandemic. Source of Knowledge has been a Newark mainstay for decades. It survived the past year thanks to the generosity of its customers and an owner who provides more than just books.

Black Classic Press.

Hope Corrigan: New Orleans is looking toward a hopeful future. A new bookstore is lighting the way. The city’s hospitality industry has been decimated by the pandemic, but Baldwin & Co. aims to create a space in which to come together again.

Elizabeth A. Harris: Overwhelmed With Orders, Some Black-Owned Bookstores Ask for Patience: “We are running as fast as we can,” a Boston shop told customers who are clamoring for antiracism books that are soaring in popularity but hard to keep in stock.

Marissa J. Lang: Bookstores by and for people of color are finding their industry niche.

Jessica Murray: Black-owned bookshops call for more diversity in UK publishing: Booksellers say interest in black authors has surged since George Floyd’s death and BLM protests.

The New York Times: ‘A Conflicted Cultural Force’: What It’s Like to Be Black in Publishing: An author, literary agent, marketer, publicist, editors and booksellers talk about how race affects their careers — and the books you read.

Kim Severson: Where Books Meet Black Mecca: A bookstore in Atlanta where half of the books aren’t for sale?

André Wheeler:‘Economic duress is nothing new’: Can America’s oldest black bookstore survive the pandemic?

David Woo: Marcus Books, the Nation’s Oldest Black Bookstore.