Until last year, the history of Black bookstores in the United States had not been fully told.
Journalist Char Adams changed that.
In November, Adams published “Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore,” the first known full-length book to chronicle the history of Black bookstores and their role in political movements throughout U.S. history.
Adams recently visited Sacramento for the Oak Park Speaker Series hosted by Underground Books. The event featured a conversation between Adams and former Mayor Kevin Johnson, who recently formed the National Association of Black Bookstores.
Adams says the idea for the project began years ago. In 2018, she read an Atlantic article by historian Joshua Clark Davis that detailed how Black-owned bookstores were targeted by the FBI in the 1960s and 1970s. The piece focused on federal surveillance, but Adams wanted to know what that repression felt like on a human level.
“I wanted to know people’s personal stories about that targeting and what it looked and felt like for Black booksellers to have these encounters and experience these repressions.” Adams says.
But those stories were hard to find online because they hadn’t been told. So Adams went looking for them. She began tracking down booksellers from the 1960s and 1970s, documenting their experiences and writing down their stories. Her initial reporting resulted in an article, “Black-owned bookstores have always been at the center of resistance,” in 2020. She knew the subject was big enough for a book.
“The only thing I would want to dedicate four years of book writing in my life to is Black-owned bookstores,” she says.
From there, the reporting followed a familiar journalistic pattern: one thread leading to another. Adams immersed herself in every piece of writing she could find about Black bookstores, compiling names of stores and owners, figuring out which still existed and which had closed and then delving into their stories of activism, espionage, violence, community, and perseverance.
A surprising discovery in Adams’ research comes at the very beginning of the book with the story of David Ruggles, the first known owner of a Black-owned bookstore, who opened his shop in Manhattan in 1834. Ruggles also was a major abolitionist figure who helped free enslaved people through the Underground Railroad.
While studying Ruggles, Adams learned that the phrase “by any means necessary,” often attributed to Malcolm X, was first said by Ruggles more than a century earlier.
“I was really honored to be able to shine a light on him [Ruggles],” Adams says.
Though dense with history, Adams says, the book’s central themes of community, resistance, and collaboration are deeply relevant today. She hopes readers see the book not only as a history lesson, but as a resource for understanding how communities have resisted systems of oppression.
Through this work, Adams says her understanding of bookstores deepened. In an era where digital books and online shopping dominate, Black-owned bookstores stood out as something fundamentally different.
“It was only through this process that I realized just how deeply Black-owned bookstores are tied to the community,” Adams says.
She describes bookstores as places where customers don’t just shop, but talk, ask for recommendations, attend book clubs, show up for events, and build relationships. Over time, those repeated interactions turn into friendships and networks of care.
“You can’t get that from a Kindle or from Amazon,” Adams says.
“Black-Owned” is Adams’ first book and she credits much of that work to mentorship, particularly from Paul Coates, a former Black Panther and founder of the publishing company Black Classic Press.
“Black-Owned” can be purchased locally at Underground Books.