Hakim's Bookstore, established in 1959 as Hakim's House of Knowledge Bookstore, is the first and oldest Black-owned bookstore in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located at 210 S 52nd Street in West Philadelphia. [1]
The store was designated as a Pennsylvania historic landmark in 2023. [1]
Hakim's Bookstore was founded by Dawud Hakim. Hakim, a former post office employee, was inspired to share information about Black history after reading 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro by J.A. Rogers (1934). [2] Prior to opening the store, Hakim sold books out his car. [1] [2]
Hakim died in 1997. His daughter, Yvonne Blake, and other family members continued to operate the store. [2]
Hakim's nearly closed in 2014, but was saved following an outpouring of support resulting from a 2015 feature article in The Philadelphia Inquirer . [2]
The physical store closed temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic, but continued to sell books through its website. Web sales increased significantly during the Black Lives Matter protests that occurred following the murder of George Floyd. [2]
Hakim's was named a “Champion Black Business” by ESPN in 2021 and was designated as a Pennsylvania historic landmark in 2023. [1] [2] [3]
Philadelphia, commonly referred to as Philly, is the most populous city in the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the second-most populous city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. It is one of the most historically significant cities in the United States and served as the nation's capital until 1800. Philadelphia is the nation's sixth-most populous city with a population of 1,603,797 as of the 2020 census. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia serves as the urban core of the larger Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of the world's largest metropolitan regions consisting of 6.245 million residents in the metropolitan statistical area and 7.366 million residents in its combined statistical area. Philadelphia is known for its extensive contributions to American history, especially the American Revolution, and for its contemporary influence in business and industry, culture, sports, and music.
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African-American bookstores, also known as black bookstores, are bookstores owned and operated by African Americans. These stores often, although not always, specialize in works by and about African Americans and their target customers are often African Americans. Although they are a variety of African-American business, African-American bookstores have often been closely tied to radical political movements including Marxism, Black Power, and pan-Africanism. The first documented African-American bookstore was established by the abolitionist David Ruggles in 1834. The first African-American bookstore to open in Harlem was Young's Book Exchange. One of the earliest African-American bookstores to achieve national prominence was Lewis Michaux's African National Memorial Bookstore, which operated in Harlem from the early 1930s to the middle of the 1970s. Michaux's store doubled as a meeting place for black activists, including most famously Malcolm X. The Black Power movement embraced black-owned bookstores in the 1960s and 70s as vehicles for promoting their ideology and creating radical political spaces in black communities across the United States. By the 1990s, African-American bookstores earned significant attention from more politically moderate and business oriented media outlets such as the magazine Black Enterprise. In the 2000s and 2010s, however, as independent bookstores of all kinds declined and bookstores chains and Amazon increasingly sold black-authored books, the number of African-American bookstores declined rapidly, dropping from more than 250 to just over 70.
Marcus Books, was founded in 1960, and is the oldest bookstore that specializes in African-American literature, history, and culture in the United States. For many years, it has been located in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco, with a second location in Oakland, California. The store has remained independent and family-owned since its founding, and it is considered a community space for African-American and literary culture in the San Francisco Bay Area.