Char Adams’ “Black-Owned” Chronicles the Untold Legacy of Black Bookstores as Engines of Freedom and Cultural Power

There’s power in the pages — and now that power finally has a book of its own.

For centuries, Black-owned bookstores have done far more than sell literature. They’ve ignited revolutions, preserved truths often erased from mainstream narratives, and offered safe havens for generations seeking knowledge and liberation. Now, for the first time, their sweeping legacy is being captured in one groundbreaking volume.

NBC News journalist Char Adams is set to release her highly anticipated debut book, Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore — the first comprehensive history tracing how these cultural institutions have shaped Black political and intellectual life in America, Penguin Random House reports.

According to Publishers Weekly, Adams’s meticulously researched work spans nearly two centuries — beginning in 1834, when David Ruggles, an abolitionist and activist, opened the nation’s first Black-owned bookstore in New York City. From that early outpost of resistance to the vibrant independent shops of today, Adams illustrates how Black bookstores have served as both refuges and rallying grounds, fueling social change through the power of words (source: Publishers Weekly).

“This is not just a book about bookstores,” Adams told NBC News. “It’s a book about freedom — about how reading and access to information have always been revolutionary acts for Black Americans.”

Through immersive storytelling and extensive interviews, Adams explores how these bookstores became hubs for organizing — from the abolitionist era to the Civil Rights Movement, and from Black Power to Black Lives Matter. Each chapter traces how booksellers and readers built communities of resistance amid surveillance, censorship, and systemic oppression.

One of the most iconic examples, the National Memorial African Bookstore in Harlem, became a nexus for thought and activism. Malcolm X delivered speeches on its front steps — dubbed “Harlem’s Speakers’ Corner” — while luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Eartha Kitt, and James Baldwin frequented its aisles (source: Smithsonian Magazine). The FBI once monitored such spaces for their perceived “subversive activity,” underscoring how dangerous Black knowledge was to the status quo.

Adams also shines light on figures like Haki Madhubuti, founder of Third World Press, and Michele Washington, who opened community bookstores during the Black Arts Movement, both of whom used literature as a means of self-determination and empowerment (source: The New York Times).

But Black-Owned is not merely a historical chronicle — it’s a call to action. As contemporary America faces renewed waves of book bans, educational censorship, and cultural polarization, Adams argues that these bookstores continue to be essential defenders of truth.

Today, spaces like Semicolon Bookstore & Gallery in Chicago, Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books in Philadelphia, and Loyalty Bookstore in Washington, D.C., are redefining what it means to build community through literature. Chicago artist and rapper Noname has joined this legacy through her Radical Hood Library project, dedicated to free access to radical and Black-authored works (source: NPR).

“Black bookstores have always been about more than commerce,” Adams writes. “They are classrooms, meeting grounds, and sacred spaces where Black imagination thrives.”

Adams, a Philadelphia native now based in Texas, has built her journalistic career covering race, identity, and culture for The New York Times, The New Republic, Teen Vogue, Oprah Daily, and Vice. Her debut merges that same journalistic precision with personal passion, positioning her both as chronicler and participant in the movement to preserve Black literary spaces.

Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore isn’t just the story of businesses — it’s the story of survival, joy, and community. In immortalizing these spaces, Char Adams hasn’t only written about history — she’s made it herself.

The book is available now for pre-order via Penguin Random House and will be released nationwide this fall.