Black Bookstores Were Not Only a Haven For Black Writers

and It Was a Cornerstone For for Social-Political Movements

By Daniella Masterson

Taking a trip to a local Black bookstore has been a time-honored experience for all ages. It is a passport to explore the wonders of the African Diaspora, a nail-biting walk through the underground Underground railroad Railroad or a spin on the dancefloor at a club where Dizzy Gillespie is performing; because a book can engage a reader’s imagination unlike anything else.

The Black bookstore is more than a place that specializes in works by and about African Americans.

Black-owned bookstores also played a prominent role in assisting Black liberation. From the abolitionist movement, and the Black Power revolution to the current-day Black Lives Matter social justice movement, Black bookstores have supported the struggle to gain freedom, equal rights, and end racial discrimination.

David Ruggles is credited with creating the first Black bookstore in Manhattan in 1828. Ruggles’ bookstore probably featured books by Black writers such as Phillis Wheatly, the first African American author of a published book of poems. At that time, most books written by African Americans were autobiographical spiritual narratives.

But Ruggles was not satisfied with just being a free Black businessman. He was an abolitionist who helped some 600 slaves to escape through the Underground Railroad.

The 19th 20th century was considered the flowering of Black literature with the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Although Jim Crow laws segregated services and opportunities for Black people, it couldn’t stop the power of the pen. Influenced both by writers who came North during the Great Migration and from the Caribbean islands, Black writers were shifting away from the slave narrative to celebrate new art forms in theatre, music, and literature. This era gave us such prolific writers as the lyrical and magical poet, Langston Hughes.

Lewis Michaux’s African National Memorial Bookstore operated in Harlem from the early 1930s until the middle of themid- 1970s – critical decades in Black social progress. Given the prominence of Michaux during the Harlem Renaissance, any one of the literary luminaries of that era – from Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay to Countee Cullen – - could have shopped or held a reading there.

Michaux’s bookstore also doubled as a meeting place for activists in the 1960s. It was reported that Malcolm X would hold meetings at the bookstore. It was a heated period in political organizing and a bountiful time for new writers like the poet, writer, and activist Nikki Giovanni, who released her second book while living in New York. A writer on the rise, Giovanni would visit Black bookstores to connect with the souls of so many great writers who blazed a path for new voices.

As African Americans' place in American society has changed over the decades, so has the focus of African American literature and the number of Black bookstores throughout the country. Here on the West Coast, few are as famous as Eso Won Books.

The beloved bookstore became an institution serving the Black literary community. For more than 33 years, it has hosted such icons as President Barak Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Toni Morrison, and Bobby Seale, (co-founder of the Black Panther Party), among others. The list of legends who graced the store’s stage makes its contribution to Black literature invaluable, particularly as it provided a haven to buy books during a heated flash point in race relations – : the George Zimmerman trial during Obama’s second term and the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In addition, Eso Won Books was a huge supporter of the Leimert Park Village Book Festival Fair (LPBF) since the first event. Eso Won co-owners James Fugate and Tom Hamilton were very instrumental in many aspects of the book fair. The festival would not have enjoyed the longevity and growth it has had without their assistance.

Eso Won’s owners recently announced that the store will close and move to an online platform. Rest assured; people are going to miss that venerable shopping experience.

Thankfully, Malik Books, located in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, has picked up the torch and has become an LPBF partner. Malik Books is an African American bookstore that specializes in books, calendars, and positive products of self-reflection and Black love.