Black-Owned

**A November LibraryReads Pick** Longtime NBC News reporter Char Adams writes a deeply compelling and rigorously reported history of Black political movements told through the lens of Black-owned bookstores,which have been centers for organizing from abolition to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter. In Black-OwnedChar Adams celebrates the living history of Black bookstores. Packed with stories of activismespionageviolencecommunityand perseveranceBlack-Owned starts with the first Black-owned bookstorewhich an abolitionist opened in New York in 1834and after the bookshopΓÇÖs violent demiseBlack book-lovers carried on its cause. In the twentieth centurycivil rights and Black Power activists started a Black bookstore boom nationwide. Malcolm X gave speeches in front of the National Memorial African Book Store in HarlemΓÇöa place dubbed ΓÇ£SpeakersΓÇÖ CornerΓÇ¥ΓÇöand laterBlack bookstores became targets of FBI agentspoliceand racist vigilantes. Stillstores continued to fuel Black political movements. Amid these strugglesbookshops were also places of celebration: Eartha Kitt and Langston Hughes held autograph parties at their local Black-owned bookstores. Maya Angelou became the face of National Black Bookstore Week. And today a new generation of Black activists is joining the radical bookstore traditionwith rapper Noname opening her Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles and several stores making national headlines when they were overwhelmed with demand in the Black Lives Matter era. As Adams makes clearin an time of increasing repressionBlack bookstores are needed now more than ever. Full of vibrant characters and written with cinematic flairBlack-Owned is an enlightening story of communityresistanceand joy.