{"id":17727,"date":"2025-11-13T17:54:58","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=17727"},"modified":"2025-11-13T17:59:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:59:26","slug":"black-owned-the-revolutionary-life-of-the-black-bookstore-by-char-adams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/13\/black-owned-the-revolutionary-life-of-the-black-bookstore-by-char-adams\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore by Char Adams"},"content":{"rendered":"

c.2025, Tiny Rep Books\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>
\n$32.00\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>
\n291 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/strong>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re not planning on being shelfish.<\/p>\n

But seriously, you\u2019ve been waiting months<\/em> for the release of your favorite author\u2019s newest book and it\u2019s in stores NOW. You have your copy, you\u2019ll be the first one to open it, your easy chair is ready, no bookmarks needed. As in the new book Black-Owned<\/em> by Char Adams,<\/strong> you knew just where to find it.<\/p>\n

For many people, it\u2019s a dream: owning a bookstore, talking about books all day, putting good reads into people\u2019s hands. These are the kinds of stories Char Adams says she likes telling, and she was surprised when she started researching for this book. The tales of Black bookstore owners is one that\u2019s rarely told.<\/p>\n

David Ruggles, for instance, was a Black abolitionist in New York, and he had quite a reputation for his ability to \u201cinspire almost any crowd to action.\u201d In 1834, he opened what would be America\u2019s first Black bookstore, using it \u201cas a home for both anti-slavery literature and his activism.\u201d<\/p>\n

A century later, Harlem\u2019s Lewis Michaux became the first person to make a career with a bricks-and-mortar bookstore when he opened National Memorial African Book Store in 1933. He was a man of determination, having gotten his start \u201cselling periodicals\u2026 with a bullhorn outside his shop\u201d every day.<\/p>\n

During the Civil Rights Movement, Black-owned bookstores such as the Drum and Spear in Washington D.C. Vaughn\u2019s Bookstore in Detroit, and Liberation Bookstore in Harlem hand-picked their stock to reflect the battle for Black rights \u2013 and sometimes, that meant violence visited their stores.<\/p>\n

Hue-Man Experience in Denver became a home for Black authors to launch new books and nurture careers; in the 1970s through the 1990s, Black publishers began to partner with America\u2019s Black bookstores to further those careers and mainstream publishers eventually followed suit.<\/p>\n

Today, Black-owned bookstores likely have a digital footprint to reach readers. Digital, however, \u201cwill not be the end of Black-owned bookstores\u2026\u201d says Adams.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as the fight for Black liberation exists, so will these shops.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before you start reading Black-Owned<\/em>, be sure you have a pen and notebook close. You\u2019ll need them to write down all the bookstores you\u2019ll want to visit, places you\u2019ll regret missing and places you\u2019ll learn about inside this fascinating volume.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just a part of what you\u2019ll find here. Author Char Adams also tells the long story of Black authors and publishers, and the struggles both had \u2013 and sometimes still have – to get their books into readers\u2019 hands. It\u2019s a surprising journey that seems intuitive now, but it wasn\u2019t so in the not-so-distant past. Bookstores and authors had to learn, by necessity, how to work together, which was an offshoot of the activism found in 1960s-era bookstores and which still continues today. It\u2019s a nice, round circle of time that readers will appreciate.<\/p>\n

Absolutely, this is a book meant for anyone who has a sky-high TBR pile and who\u2019s heading to the bookstore this week. Find Black-Owned<\/em>. It\u2019s just what you want when you have a need for read.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

c.2025, Tiny Rep Books\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 $32.00\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 291 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor You\u2019re not planning on being shelfish. But seriously, you\u2019ve been waiting months for the release of your favorite author\u2019s newest book and it\u2019s in stores NOW. You have your copy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-17727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17732,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17727\/revisions\/17732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17727"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=17727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}