Unpacking Black Genius: Paul Coates and the Books that Shaped Him

Foreign.

What is happening?

Family?

What is going on?

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

This is your host, Derek Young.

And this is another episode of the Read of Black Genius podcast where we learn about your favorite writers.

Favorite writers.

I'm your host again, Derek Young, blurred extraordinaire and co owner of Mahogany Books.

We have a special episode today as my guest is someone whose contribution to literature has spanned over 40 years and on a personal note, has been an amazing mentor for my wife and I as we journey through this life as booksellers.

Before I introduce my guests, I want to thank our sponsor, mahoganybooks.com of course.

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So now that we got that out the way today, again I have the honor of welcoming a friend, a pioneer, and a person who has been a type of mentor to me.

Paul Coates, founder and director of Black Classic Press and a gooddaytoprint.com welcome to the Reader of Black Genius podcast Bible.

Coates, how are you today?

I'm tremendously well, Derek, and really, really pleased to be here with you and sharing this conversation.

Awesome, awesome.

Again, like I said, I'm super honored.

When I first was sitting down trying to draft out what the reader of Dajing is podcast would be and who I would want to speak to, I had like a wish list of people and I wrote your name over.

Like I think he will say yes, but this is like upper level.

So when you say yes, I was just very over the moon and you know, I told Ramonda about it and she was like, okay, like I'm listening in.

Like I kind of want to hear this conversation because it's just been like a phenomenal relationship that we've had with you and what you've meant to, you know, black books and everything that we're doing is.

It's just incredible.

So, you know, we really appreciate you and again, thank you for being here with us today.

Thank you.

I'm grateful, I'm grateful to be able to be here with you, but in general support the effort of you and your wife Ramonda.

I've watched you guys over the years I've watched you go from the Internet to one, brick and mortar to two, brick and mortar.

It doesn't matter where you were.

Your vision, your vision has always been to provide as many books as possible to as many people as possible.

And in that sense, you've done it with the intention of raising us up.

Raising us up.

So to be in support of that is, like, what my backbone is made of.

So I would be here.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I appreciate it.

So I know we're going to get into your origin story, but I want to give our listeners just a few points of your biography, just in case they aren't aware.

And we'll get into some of the.

That more through the course of this conversation.

But founded Black classic Press in 1978, established BCP Digital Printing in 1995.

One of my favorite things is you publish Walter Mosley's book.

I think it was 1997.

And all that you've done in terms of working with black booksellers, black authors, contributing to making books available and accessible, books that are like, I think the crux of what people are reading to understand a history and a heritage is just, you know, hugely impactful.

So much so you've won.

In 2018, you.

You received the Dorothy Porter Wesley Award from the association for Study of African American Life and History.

And then in 2020, you received a lifetime award for.

From Community of Literary Magazine and Presses, the Lord Knows Award, which I just love that name.

But so these are just some of the things that you've done that has been just a huge contribution to literature.

So where we want to start is usually the first question.

Is your origin story.

I want to talk about your origin story.

Where does the story of Paul Coates begin?

So, Derek, I want to go back because I was listening in your introduction, you were saying over 40 years, actually, the.

My origin story and my relationship to black books goes back over the last.

At least 60 years.

Okay.

However, because that's when I first became aware of black books.

And that's when I, at some point there, I became aware of them and I began pursuing them.

In terms of book selling, it goes back over 50 years, specifically about 54 years.

Some people may know that in addition to other things, I was a member of the Black Panther Party.

And when I left the party, I still had people in jail.

I was in California.

I was in Oakland, California.

I caught a plane back to Baltimore.

And on that plane, I was disappointed in leaving the Black Panther Party, but felt I had to.

But I didn't want to leave the struggle.

And on that plane, I committed myself to working in the interests of black people.

And specifically because I had people in jail, I committed myself to working with those people in jail.

And that's what I did.

I came back, I organized the George Jackson prison movement.

And inside of that concept, the concept of a prison movement organization to support Panthers who.

Or Panthers and former Panthers who were incarcerated.

Inside of that was the concept of starting a black bookstore.

And so that's what we did in 1972.

We organized a black bookstore that became the Black Book.

There were actually three parts of that prison program, and our intention was to create on the outside of the jail a mechanism that people coming out of the jail could transition into.

And in their transition, they would provide support in our community.

We hoped that taking literature into the jail would transform these men.

And once transformed, they would come out, work in our community, in the interest of our community.

So there would be this relationship that already exists of community supporting people in the jail.

Now, the part that we were creating was that when the people were coming out and when they came out, they would, in fact, support our community, rebuild our community.

Our models for that would have been George Jackson.

George Jackson.

And of course, Malcolm X would have been models for that.

But at that time, George was just riding high, and people were so inspired by his life and by his death.

And we wanted to create a program.

The first part of that program, Derek, was to create that bookstore.

I talked about the black book.

So I began selling books in Baltimore 50 years ago because that's when that store would have existed in 19.

Actually, 52 years ago.

I'm sorry, 52 years ago, because that's when the bookstore would have existed on Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore.

So we wanted to create the bookstore.

We also wanted to create a publishing company.

And then to top that off, we were going to create a.

A printing company that was going to supply books to the publishing company that was going to supply books to bookstores, and that would have been our bookstore.

But other bookstores that worked in the interests of our community, particularly black bookstores and radical bookstores, that never happened.

The.

Well, let me say this.

The organization never really happened.

The organization never really gelled by.

But that plan that I created for the George Jackson prison movement is what exists today as Black Classic Press, and it's what exists today as BCP digital printing.

We didn't know how 52 years ago how we were going to do it, but the vision was created, and that's what we became.

We became that publishing House Black Classic Press.

And we became that printing company.

And to this date, as far as I know, we are the only black owned printing company, book printing company in America.

Wow, that's.

So again, this is the phenomenal part of the story is because, you know, when I think about, when I think about how we, Ramonda and I have tried to strategize and think about Mahogany Books as a social enterprise that is impacting people, that is working to make books available and accessible and to not be limited by publishers or what other people said was that was the books or authors that were of import to our community.

It's the work you were doing then, it's the vision you already had then that we've been trying to figure out how to emulate and build in today's economy.

So that's just a phenomenal.

You know, what you just laid out there was.

It was incredible.

I hope people really appreciate the vision of that back then, you know.

You know, one of the things that I think in terms of taking on, taking on tasks that no one, no one really picks you out and says, look, it's your job to help the black community.

That's something that emanates from within.

And when it emanates from within you, I think anyway, I think we have to be true to it.

I don't think there's any rest unless we are true to it.

I don't think there's any future unless we're true to it.

I think that's where everything comes from.

And I think once we vision a path, then you know, come hella high water.

We, we're committed to that path.

I think if we go off the path, at least this is, this is why I've lived my life as it is.

I think if we go off the path, that's like passing through hell.

Yeah, it's like passing through hell to stay on the path.

You know, One of the reasons why we were not able to continue as an organization, the George Jackson Prison movement, was no sooner did we launch, then the state police force came down on us.

The prison police force came down us, cointel with the FBI, all of those instruments that were in place that were there to oppress the Black Panther Party and other black revolutionary groups.

They didn't have much to do in Baltimore at that time, so they focused on us.

And they did shut down our efforts to get books into the jail.

They did do that.

They did not shut down the operation that existed on the street, even though they tried.

I was targeted very early on after we after we started, they tried to put a robbery of a taxicab on me.

Okay.

And yet it was an effort just.

Just to shut us down and slow us down.

See, the whole thing of arresting people as a means of knocking your organization out, that was perfected in the Black Panther Party.

So you would have arrest all the time.

And what the tactic was is that you would tie these Panthers up in.

In.

In bail hearings, and you would break them.

And it did.

I mean, it really, really did, because we didn't own property at the time, and so somebody had to put up the bail.

Well, if they didn't put up the bail, you stayed in jail.

You see, that was the same thing they tried to do to me with the George Jackson prison movement and what became the black book.

It just didn't work, though, because people in the community rallied to my support, particularly people like Perrin Mitchell, people like his brother Michael Mitchell, who was a lawyer at the time.

These people rallied to my support and challenged the authorities in Baltimore.

So they had to back up and get up off of that.

And consequently, our efforts as booksellers, our efforts continued.

So you started down.

The path that I want to start going now is talking about the obstacles and the aha moments and any of the books that you've read throughout your teen and college years to help to shape you into the person that you became today.

So I'm just curious, as you think about.

Think back to that time, what were some of the books that you were reading that was, like, so impactful to you to help say, hey, this is.

Like I said, this is a.

My soul won't be settled unless I do this.

So, Derek, I'm gonna go back, and this is continuing on the origin story, because they're very, very connected.

I thought I had read people like Baldwin.

I'd read people like Richard Wright and things Langston Hughes.

I knew, and I thought I really knew something about black books.

It wasn't until I opened up the bookstore, though, that I really began to learn about black books.

And my teachers were the people who were inside the jails.

My teachers were the people inside the jails.

Because the people inside the jails would constantly have their relatives come to me, and they would ask for books, and so they would ask for books by.

They used to call him A.J.

rogers.

They would never say, j.

A.

Rogers.

Everybody would come and say, you got any books by A.J.

rogers?

Or you got books by Yaka Ben?

You know, they would mash up the names.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I'm laughing because I know these names.

But it forced me at that time to go look for those books.

It forced me to go look for those books.

And as I look for those books, I found other books.

And the brothers would send out other names that I had never heard of.

And as I looked for the books and I found the books, the brothers would send messages back, yeah, that's this, right, man.

Because, you know, the white man took that book.

The white man don't want us to know, and they don't want, you know, want us to have any knowledge of this.

Well, that part I found to be misinformed.

Misinformed, okay.

More than anything, white publishers were just not concerned with the books because the books did not sell.

The books could not be sold.

If the white publishers had found a way to make a profit off the books, trust me, they would have sold the books.

They couldn't find a way to make a profit off of them.

It didn't mean those books were not important.

And it was those brothers pointing to the importance of them, particularly like in Doc Ben's case.

I didn't know who Doc Ben was.

They kept sending these mashed up names out and.

And I finally figured out his name and began to track him.

And I tracked him to New York, and once I found him, I quickly invited him to Baltimore.

And that would have been in 1971.

1971.

So real quick, it would have been 1973.

I'm sorry, it wasn't 71.

1973.

I invited Doc to Baltimore and we stayed together in a relationship as bookseller and then later his book publisher.

But always a friend until he died.

Right.

A lot of people don't know it was Dr.

Ben, Dr.

Yosef Ben Jochannon, who.

Who started the whole Nile Valley movement, you know?

You know, back in the early.

Back in the early 70s, the 80s, we weren't thinking about if we thought about Africa.

We thought about West Africa.

You know, we thought about the Ashanti, you know, we thought about that.

We never thought about East Africa and the Nile Valley.

It was Doc Ben that carried us back and carried our minds back.

It was also Doc Ben.

I want people to be clear who named my son Ta?

Nehisi's name comes directly from Dr.

Ben.

It was him who gave me that name as I went to the hospital that morning to name that boy.

Okay.

Okay.

That's an incredible story.

Awesome.

So, yeah.

So I definitely wanted people to know who you were talking about.

J.

A Rogers.

I'm trying to remember From Superman to Man, I think is the Name of.

One of his books.

So Rogers.

Rogers was a contemporary.

He actually grew up with Marcus Garvey in Jamaica.

When he came to the States, his first book, his first published book was Superman to Man.

Following that, he did a number of books.

My most impressive one is a small one called the Real Facts About Ethiopia.

I shouldn't say my most because I'm impressed by all of Roger's works.

But he not only published books, he was one of the earliest war correspondents that traveled in our interests.

During World War II, he traveled to Ethiopia.

He became a press liaison person for Haile Selassie.

But he continued to send reports back to the United States.

His books Nature Knows no Color Line, Sex and Race, which is three volume World's Great Men of Color.

This is one that we republished.

I had it here with me.

There we go.

His your history, which was a compilation of articles that he did in 1990.

I'm sorry, he did from 1919 forward, but published in the Pittsburgh Courier.

He did a number of books.

And critical to our understanding of our history is J.

Rogers.

W.

Du Bois would say no man, no man has published as much about the Negro as J.

Rogers.

And Du Bois went on to criticize him.

Sometimes he makes mistakes.

But Du Bois found himself over and over and over again dependent on the work that Rogers did.

He was a self trained historian.

Died in 1965.

He's one of our legendary figures whose name needs to be spoke.

Every time we speak our ancestors.

Awesome.

So do you.

For you is so Dr.

Bam assuming also has the same type of place in your mindscape.

Dr.

Ben is mightier.

He's mightier.

He's mightier in terms of his place in history.

Doc wrote a lot.

He wrote a lot.

As far as I'm concerned, his writing is different than J.

Rogers, who you'll follow like a standard textbook.

Doc is writing as he lectures.

Here's his importance.

First of all, he is the prototype of Pan Africanism.

Here's a man who was born to an Ethiopian father who used to be one of Haile Selassie's ambassadors.

He was born to an Ethiopian father, he was born to a Puerto Rican mother.

And he was born on the international date line in 1919.

So he never knew whether he was born in 1919 or 1920.

Okay.

This man had family in Ethiopia.

He had family in the Caribbean.

He had family in Puerto Rico.

He had family in Cuba.

And he spent most of his life here in the United States, in New York, in Harlem.

The man used to live in.

I can't think of the name of the terrace there, but there's a terrace there that a lot of black people lived in on 135th Street.

That used to be where that terrace is built.

It used to be the headquarters of the unia.

Okay, so.

So he's the prototype.

He's a prototype, as far as I'm concerned, of our Pan Africanism.

And he could reach around the world no matter where he went.

He had contacts and connections.

And this is a man who was pretty much an atheist.

Not pretty much, but he didn't really call himself an atheist.

But he condemned most forms of worship and religious belief because they were not historically based, as far as he's concerned.

But in being that.

So he condemned most of Islam as being an outro of Christianity, which, without acknowledging it and without acknowledging the African origins of that, so he would condemn this.

And yet he ended up a master instructor at the University of Al Azhazar in Egypt, which is one of Islam's highest universities.

Ended up teaching there.

He ended up teaching there for a long time as a good friend of the folks who ran Al Azhar.

You know, he didn't sneak in.

They invited him in to Alazari, and that's where he taught from.

So he's a different kind of person.

Much, much more grassroots, I think, even, than JA Rogers, a tremendous lecturer who would hold thousands of people spellbound.

His large accomplishment.

I know I'm talking a lot, but I hope it's okay.

That's what we're here for.

That's what we're here for.

We're here to hear your story, hear your insight.

I think one of the greatest things he did was.

I think it was in 2000, and I may have that year wrong.

He was center to taking close to 2,000 people back to the motherland.

Okay.

With Ascat.

He was one of the founders of the association for the Study of Classical African Societies.

And I may be pronouncing civilization, African civilization, ascat.

He was one of the founders and is still honored today.

And they took 2,000 people back to Egypt.

You know, if you went to Egypt without Dr.

Ben, and they saw you as black in Egypt, they say, Dr.

Ben, Dr.

Ben.

They didn't care who you were, but to them, if you were black, you were related to Dr.

Ben, and they wanted you to know that they knew who Dr.

Ben was.

Wow, that's incredible.

Right?

Incredible.

So you.

So the.

Like, you said, you were reading these books before, but once you got to the place where you built up the black book, which turns into Black Classic Press.

I'm curious as to that story moving forward.

Once you really kind of dove into lifting up Black Classic Press, what was the story for you from there on?

See, So I don't know that we ever lifted up the bookstore.

We remained a small, struggling bookstore even when we launched Black Classic Press.

In fact, we launched Black Classic Press at the same time that I decided I had to go back to school and get a job.

Okay.

But I was not going to do the one without the other.

I had.

I still had people in jail.

I was still supporting them, but I needed to support my family.

And so I went back to school, eventually to graduate school.

And the year I left for Graduate School, 1978, was the same year we incorporated Black Classic Press.

We had started publishing before that under the name of the Black Grapevine.

We did a lot of mimeograph books, tabletop books.

And in 1978, when I went away, I wanted to make sure that going away to school did not mean I was leaving our efforts.

I closed the bookstore because we couldn't keep that open and started Black Classic Press.

Our first books actually were pamphlets, and they were pamphlets.

One of the books I had incorporated.

Yeah.

I don't know that we were that successful.

We started with a dime, you know what I mean?

Even.

Even as I was closing the bookstore, I told some people in my community that it was time for me to start the publishing part of what I was doing.

I didn't have any money.

In fact, someone offered a printing press to us, to me.

And it was a tabletop printing press, and it cost $300, and I didn't have the money to.

To pay for that.

So I told several people who were close to me about it.

I didn't say, lend me the money.

I didn't say give me the money.

But in the course of my projecting what I was going to do and what I wanted to do, the one sister who was on welfare at the time stepped forward and said, Paul, I have $200.

Take this for the press.

Wow.

Another.

I'm sorry.

She said she had $100.

She was $100.

There was another brother who had just gotten out, had just been discharged, but who.

Who had.

Who had been coming around the bookstore reading the books.

And I was talking with him, and he said, Paul, I've got $200.

Take that.

With their $300, we bought that printing press.

And with that printing press, we printed the first pamphlets that became Black Classic Press.

Titles didn't do a great job with them.

They're kind of.

They're kind of scruffy, and some of them may still be around.

I'm embarrassed by them.

But what I've come to understand, Derek, it's not so much how polished you are, it really is your intention and what you're doing and how people understand your sincerity.

I think that's what propelled us forward.

I think that's what has kept us on track.

And even now, we're like years into the.

In what, 45 years away from 46 years or whatever it is, away from 1978.

We still struggle.

You know, we've set up the third part, which is a printing press.

We struggle every day, partly because that's what business is, but the other part is.

It's what life is.

You set a goal in life, you're going to struggle to get there.

You know, they're going to be challenges.

They're going to be things that distract you.

There going to be all kinds of reasons why you should quit and why you should just stop.

But, you know, if you're going to live life, then you're going to go ahead and live life.

And that's what we do in the press.

But it's not because I think we have built it up.

Only now do I think we're even close to having something that might work in a financial way.

Right.

But that part still doesn't excite me.

What excites me is still finding those books, bringing those books out that declare our history, that reject us into the world in positive ways, that go against the lies, the many, many lies that people have told to oppress us.

Right.

You know, I think there's a.

I've.

This is something I feel very passionate about.

And the reason why I say success is because I think specifically in our community, we need to reclassify the idea of capitalism.

And success is because.

And that's why I.

I gravitate to the idea of social entrepreneurship, is because the definitions of success is about wealth attainment and the accumulation of goods and assets and materials and stuff like that.

But that's not who we are even in our heritage.

Commerce has been around for a long time.

Is, what are you doing with commerce?

How are you lifting up people?

And the idea that you put forth first one is paradigm changing.

Right.

It helps people to see new ideas, understand concepts in new ways.

It inspires people to want to give.

So for me, in that concept, in that context, it is.

It's a success because of the influence it has on people.

And I think that's why?

You know, when we talk about, you know, business, you know, whether, you know, you accumulate a million dollars in profit or whatever, if for me, none of that means anything.

Like you said, if the books aren't, we aren't impacting people.

If people don't walk into the store and feel seen, feel welcomed, if they don't walk out without a book with a book, that, that may change the narrative of their life.

Like to get a new idea of what they want to do or they find a book to share with their kid and that they become a reader, excited reader off of that.

Like, those are the real successes.

So I, to me, I will always say that those were success is because it's more about the social impact of the enterprise versus, you know, the financial gain.

Derek, I agree with you.

I agree with you completely.

I could not have, I could not be around as long as I've been around.

The printing company, for example, has been in existence close to 30 years.

Close to 30 years.

We've had people who have worked with us for those 30 years.

We've had other people who've worked with us for 26, 15 years.

To be able to open that door and to meet the challenges and close the door, go home and come back and open again.

That has to be measured as success.

To be able to pay black people to work in any institution, in any company over and over and over again has to be measured as success.

Hakee has a thing that he says now because they Hakeem out of booty because they, you know, the founder of Third World Press and Betty Shabazz schools and several other schools in Chicago Institute of Positive Education, he has a saying that he, that he makes.

And he said, you want to be revolutionary, go write a paycheck.

You know.

Well.

Go write a paycheck.

It's revolutionary.

And in that sense, I mean, I mean, especially look, look at him.

Third World Press has been around whatever years.

I said Third World Press has been around 11 years longer than I've been around.

You know, I think this year 57 for them.

I think it's 57 for them.

The point is they've been doing that over and over and over.

There's no way you could look at an operation like that and say it's not successful.

It is obviously successful and we've been successful.

I always though, Derek like to reference it because I don't want folks to ever think, ever think that success like you're saying, like you're pointing out, equates to making a million dollars $2 million or what have you.

That's.

That's.

That's.

That could be a measurement of success.

It's not the measurement of success I use.

In fact, I think you can be very successful and struggling every day to keep your bills paid.

I think you can.

I think people raise families that way.

I think.

I mean, I believe there are families.

I grew up in one that struggled every day to make sure there was food on the table and still raise successful sons and daughters.

I think our businesses are similar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

100% in.

In agreement with that.

So I'm curious, what were some of the major shift moments, you know, that got you on that path?

So, again, we were talking about the.

The bookstore.

You.

You end up closing it down, and you began really focusing in on black Classic press.

What were, I guess, some of those shift moments there that helped you to really kind of broaden a vision of that and to take it online to make printing books for black writers accessible, like, across the country for people.

So I want to go back again to Origin Story.

The part I probably glossed over is, again, I had people in jail.

I had people.

I had panthers in jail.

And the whole time, up until about 2014, there were Panthers that I was.

That I was responsible because.

And I say responsible.

I was the defense captain of the chapter.

Those people went to jail under my watch, and as far as I was concerned, if they went to jail under my watch, I was responsible for those people.

I had people in jail who.

It was very, very important for me to maintain a structure that could speak to power, and the press was that structure.

I recognize the printing company could give life or allow the press to function and consequently always be available to give life and value to those brothers who are still incarcerated.

That's part of the subtext for all of this.

You see, my life has largely been determined by the things I did in the Black Panther Party.

And those people who I became committed to helped stamp my life and helped stamp me, because I had something to be committed to, something I was willing to be committed to, something I.

Something that I felt worth being committed to.

That's the underlying text.

So transitioning from the bookstore to the publishing company was simply a movement in the same direction.

In other words, voice was very important, and voice still is very important.

And controlling our voice was important and still is very important.

Publishing gave that to us.

Printing.

Printing was the tool that our ancestors used to get the message out.

And they combined the two.

They combined book printing, and they combined book selling.

This is how our ancestors Communicated if they didn't have the press themselves, which they often did.

Frederick Douglass had his press.

Martin Delaney had his.

These were people who were.

Who were skilled printers.

Yeah, it was skilled printers.

So I felt in a large measure that I was following in these footsteps.

And the path that was set in front of me was the logical path to take.

Moving to control of our print, bringing that forward, bringing from those ancestors forward into a contemporary sense.

There were book publishers and book printers around who served as models for me in a contemporary sense.

So I didn't get that idea.

The bookstore, the publishing company and the printing company out of the air.

There were models.

Third World Press was, in fact, a publishing company that served as a model in Washington, D.C.

you had Drum and Spear Press.

Well, Drum and Spear Press was a bookstore, and it was a publishing company.

And they began to deal with people in Africa who could print books.

And you see.

So they never set up, the three of them, but I saw it inside of.

Inside of.

You're familiar with Marcus books in Oakland, California?

Yes, love them.

So I don't know how much you know the history of.

Of Blanche and Karen, the current owners of Marcus Books, but their father was Julian Richardson, and Julian Richardson was one of my early models.

Also.

Julian Richardson went to school.

School with.

He went to school with Ralph Ellison.

In school, Julian Richardson learned.

And the school they went to was Tuskegee.

What?

Okay, so that's right.

That.

So.

So.

So when Ralph Ellison is writing about this black college and things like.

He's talking about Tuskegee.

Okay.

He and Julian Richardson went to school together there.

Julian became a printer.

Julian's print work carried him to the west coast, where he set up.

Later he set up the printing company, but later he set up the bookstore and a publishing company.

Julian Richardson did some of the early works of republishing books.

He republished Stolen Legacy before anybody did Stolen Legacy, he republished Marcus Garvey's philosophies and opinion, particularly Volume one.

No one had that out, and he did other books out there.

These were models for me.

So in terms of.

Of the things that influenced me, in terms of the things that caused me to go in the direction I went in, I'm looking at models.

I'm looking at models.

I'm looking at ways that the things that I see about them, the things I like, what is it that I can incorporate and how this inspired all of that is inside Black Classic Press.

It's our history.

It's our history from.

From way back.

You know, one of my favorite books, Drusilla Dungey, Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians.

They were printers.

They were printers and they were newspaper people.

You know, this is from.

This is from your wife's place.

You know, Oklahoma.

Yeah.

You know, particularly Oklahoma City.

These folks had the Black Dispatch there.

But.

But also it's.

It's Drusilla Dungey Houston, who is watching the bombing.

She's watching the planes in Tulsa that come in and drop bombs.

And it's Drusilla Dungey, Houston, who writes later, who says, I thank God.

I thank God that I didn't have a son that day.

I will send him out to.

To die.

This is a church woman.

You know, when you look at it, she.

She's all laid back and churchy looking and what have you.

But she was a fierce fighter, and she worked with her brother to.

To establish schools in Oklahoma, but also to make sure that the Black Dispatcher newspaper was published.

And then she published her books.

She published and printed and published her books.

This is like models for me, man.

This is, this is like, like, like you asked about direction.

These are like godposts, you know, These are the people who are telling me, I must go on.

You must go on.

You must do this.

I'm talking with these ancestors, man.

And, you know, I'm talking with these ancestors.

I'm looking at contemporary settings where things are.

And I'm actually saying, why are we not there?

Why do we not have a press that, you know, a public, a printing company that prints books for us?

Because that's the circle.

That really, really is a circle.

If you think about it.

Why should we have to go to white people to have our books printed?

Yeah.

Why.

Why should we have to have the approval of white folk?

So it didn't make a lot of sense to me, and taking that step did, but it was based on examples that already existed in the world.

Right.

What I love about that story, and this is like, this is a history book I need to read because this is something I absolutely love, knowing the revolutionary efforts of book selling, book publishing and book printing.

And you mentioned Frederick Douglass.

And a person that I, that I thought of was David Walker Walker's appeal and his efforts to create insurrections in the south by printing his written works and distribute them throughout the South.

Yeah, like that.

So just the.

The long legacy of black folk using the written word and printing to empower black folk to get them just in a place to continue to fight for their freedoms.

Right.

Because it's something they were already doing, but to provide the words and vocabulary to help them, like Contextualize certain aspects is like this.

Yeah, it just makes me feel so proud that I'm a part of this long legacy, because it.

Yeah, it just.

This is something that is right now, while books are being banned, like, it just.

It doesn't stop it.

It continues to be a very important aspect of the work that we all need to be doing every day.

So.

So, Derek, it's good that you point to David Walker, which is one of the books, of course, that we do publish, David Walker's appeal.

And I think one of the things that became clear to me became very, very clear to me as I continued to read, as I continued to go to different black collections of books around the country.

One of the things that became clear to me is that most people were familiar with us as resisters through our protests, through our, you know, our successful and sometimes not successful revolts.

Okay?

People were familiar with that, but we were not tracking attendant to that a history that undergirded that there's a written history that undergirds our physical resistance.

And that history goes back to people like David Walker and several people before David Walker.

David Walker becomes very distinguished because he's here in America and because he publishes what became a book.

There were news articles first, though, before they became a book, and he publishes those articles.

The thing that's interesting about David Walker is he's publishing to reach the mind.

He's publishing to reach the mind.

He certainly had as a target, as you say, our brothers enslaved, brothers and sisters in the South.

He had that as a target.

But Walker really saw his audience as being those folks who were accessible to newspapers in the.

Because when you read Walker, what you find.

And Walker's text becomes the primary text, the primary text as a liberation document.

It becomes the earliest manifesto that we have, a lengthy manifesto that we have that expresses black disgust and black resistance and black willingness to take up art arms to resolve this conflict.

We're doing this long before white folks, long before John Brown.

David Walker is there getting down.

Okay?

This is the thing Walker is talking about, though.

You know, when Walker publishes in 1829 and then again in 1831, Walker is actually telling.

This is surprising.

But he's talking as much to the enslaved.

He's talking as much to the.

To those people who are not held in bondage as he is the enslaved.

His arguments are those people.

He starts talking about people who have been educated in white schools.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

He talks about how they've been miseducated.

The same thing Carter Woodson would talk about of you being educated in a school that tells you to serve someone else and not come back and serve your community.

This is David Walker.

Yeah.

His stuff really underpins and lays the banner of nationalism out for us to follow many, many years.

It's a consistent banner.

And I think, again, the thing I like most is he's really speaking to the mind.

He's saying, like, be logical.

This don't make sense.

If this kid does this to your children, you got to do that.

Now, of course, the.

The appeal leads to things like Nat Walker.

I mean, Nat Turner.

Some people trace it beyond that, but it certainly.

I mean, it's certainly without question, question raises a state of consciousness, causes white people to issue a response to it and be prepared to respond.

But it also puts black people in a camp that they have to decide where they are, which eventually.

Eventually they come around to Walker's way of thinking.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was.

I absolutely love that book when I read it.

I think I read that book for the first time.

I think 20.

We had just opened the Anacostia store in 2018, and I was trying to, you know, of course, reading through our inventory, trying to find books to recommend to people.

Well, this is a short book.

Let me, you know, check it out.

And.

And I'm just like, oh, my God, like, how have I not read this book before?

And it just completely.

His steadfastness about freedom and what you have to do to attain it.

And then to learn that people, White folk, were now passing laws against reading because his work were inciting insurrections.

Like, it just.

It.

It continues to.

To build the foundation and cement in me as well as, you know, a lot of other people understand this, but for me, just why I'm so passionate about doing what I do, that what words mean.

Right.

The impact and power of words written by a black person.

For a black person to liberate them mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally, like, whatever it is, that's.

That is one of the most important things that we can do in this world.

So.

Yeah, that.

I absolutely love that.

No, I agree with you.

And that's, again, part of the motivation in terms of selling books, in terms of publishing books, and certainly in terms of printing books.

You know, one of the things that I get from the printing a book, I get to work with so many black people and bring their words into being.

You know, I help them bring their words into being.

I help them do exactly what you're talking about.

And that is tremendously exciting.

That doesn't Say that they couldn't get it, get their books printed somewhere else.

Again, like I was saying, it completes the whole cycle.

You know, like, you have black thinking, and then you have black creation, and then you have black production, and then you turn that around and you're going to have black consumption of that genius that created it.

But you also going to have an economic model where the coins go around and around and around and around in our community.

I love it, man.

I love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So.

So you mentioned one of the books.

You said that you was hugely impactful, impactful to you wonderful Ethiopians.

Curious.

Are there.

Are there any other books that you would care to share with us that really helped to shape you?

Yeah, there are a couple of books.

I mentioned one of the Ethiopians, as you said, George Wells Farker.

People ask me today, like, we probably have 100, 125 titles that we publish.

I don't think you should go through life.

I just don't think you should go through life without reading that small pamphlet by George Wells Parker, Children of the Sun.

I think it's like one of the most critical pieces that you can find.

And we found it and we published it, and I was so glad that we did.

Asa Hilliard, who many of your readers and listeners might know, used to talk about George Wells Parker.

And I remember I gave Asa a copy of Parker because I wanted to know who Parker was.

I didn't know who Parker was at the time.

You can go online now, and I urge your readers to go online and they'll find information on Parker.

But when I published George Wells Parker, no one knew who George Wells Parker was at the time.

Okay?

No one alive knew.

People a generation or two before us knew George Wells Parker.

But Parker, Asa and I talk about it.

Asa.

I remember Asa saying, Asa saying, paul, out of all the books I've read, out of all the books I've read, no one has ever said this thing and done this thing better than George Wells Parker.

You have to understand George Wells Parker.

His Children of the sun is only about 32 pages.

It's about 32 pages, but it is so compact, and it touches on all of the themes that people like Diop are going to talk about.

He precedes Drusilla Houston, okay?

He precedes Drusilla Dungey Houston.

He precedes almost anybody you can think that is writing on ancient African history.

George Wells Parker.

It's one of the earliest pieces.

He separates himself.

He separates himself from other black scholars at the time in this way.

Most of your history up until that point on ancient history, almost all of your history was what's called Mosaic history.

In other words, it's Bible history.

People are citing the Bible for their reference.

Well, you have to understand that the Bible itself is a sacred document.

It's not a historical document.

It's a document that's not.

Somebody didn't go through and say, well, this is history, and we can prove this is history.

No, it's a narrative that people have cobbled on things.

And this is not to take the Bible out.

It's to say, what's.

So the Bible is a narrative.

It's a narrative history, and it's a history of people who have a belief that they reinforce by making a history around it.

That's what most black scholars relied on to tell our history and most white.

White scholars at that time did to tell white history.

Parker breaks this.

Parker's not dependent on the Bible.

He's not citing the Bible at all.

What he's doing is citing other historians.

And he does this in about 32 pages.

And again, for me, it's one of the most powerful books because you can read that book, and even if you don't walk away as an expert, you have an understanding of the global African president.

And that's what Parker is talking about when he talks about the Children of the Sun.

He's talking about there is not a continent, there's not a place on this earth that our hands have not touched, that we have not been.

And those are the people he's talking about when he talks about the Children of the Sun.

So you know how many times I've.

Seen this book in my store and have not picked it up?

I've got to go.

I'm gonna get that book tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

As far as I'm concerned.

As far as I'm concerned.

I would.

I would go with.

I would go with George Wells Park.

I would go with the autobiography of Malcolm X.

I think when you get advanced and you're really, really out there, I think you really need to do.

Drusilla Dungey, Houston.

These are.

These are wonderful.

Ethiopia's an ancient Kushite empire.

These are books that give you a perspective and a perspective that allows you to view the diasporic world, black world, in a way that you see the connections and you see your connection in the world.

You know, this is one of.

I was thinking about him today, knowing that I was going to talk with you.

This is how Renoko Rashidi and I were so close because Renoko Bamboo that we published Children of the Sun.

And he, when he read the book, he couldn't believe it.

It blew his mind and he had to find me.

So he kept calling around and he finally found me, said, are you the person that published this?

Now?

This was when he was first getting his footings and we had discussions and from that time, from, from his early, early days of coming into consciousness, we continued to have discussions.

He also would have told you, George Wells Parker is the.

I mean, George Wells Parker and Drusilla Dungy, Houston.

Those are the places to start.

I've added to my to be read list.

That's 100%.

100%.

There are other books, you know, I think when we're particularly dealing with West African history, there's a book called by J.C.

deGraff Johnson.

And look, you have to remember again, but brothers in jail were turning me on to these books.

And once they turned me on to books, what I Learned to do, and I recommend this to all of your readers.

What I learned to do was go to the bibliography of the footnotes of the book.

That's what I learned to do.

And from there I found who was being cited.

And then I would start chasing those books.

Right?

So there's a book called African Glory that we published.

These were, these were books that we early on published.

It's a very, very easy reader of African history.

Very, very easy reader.

One of the key points of that book is it was published in 1953, 1954.

And the J.C.

deGraff Johnson was a Ghanaian.

So he's publishing that book as Ghana is getting ready to emerge out of colonialism and as their minds are radical minds.

I mean, these are people who are demanding their freedom.

Kwame Nkrumah and the whole group, they're demanding their freedom.

JC DeGraff Johnson is one of them.

And so in that sense, it is an anti colonial history of Africa.

And you have to remember before that time, before that time, so much of Africa had been written out of Africa because the Europeans were the ones that were doing histories, you see.

So J.C.

deGraff Johnson publishes one of the classic anti colonial texts.

He starts telling the history of Africa as the history of Africa.

And you know, our brother Emil called Cabral, our brother Emil called Cabral, said before he was assassinated, before he was assassinated, Emil Cabral says, you know, when the Europeans came into Africa, African history stopped because it became European history and a history of Europe in Africa, that's when it stopped.

We will be free.

We will be free.

And I'm paraphrasing But we'll be free when we write the history of Africa.

J.C.

deGraff Johnson began that 1954.

Oh, God.

You shouldn't get me started on this stuff, man.

I love it.

I'm excited.

I'm trying to figure out how to be part of this conversation every week.

I need to be hearing all this stuff.

This is awesome.

Now you.

So for me, and being in touch with it really brought me in touch with the ancestors.

And this stuff was busting around inside me.

It had to be published.

It just had to be published.

It wasn't about the money.

It wasn't about being successful.

It had to be published.

It had to be brought together.

It had to be assembled in a particular way in which people could actually see this intellectual side of our struggle, this intellectual side that went along with the protests that we were doing in the street.

The protests.

Those things are actions of protests like Nat Turner aligned with.

That was a particular insulet that undergirded that and made it all possible.

Yeah, it was our thinking and our ability that that's really, you know.

You know, because when you think about protests, it's action.

People are in action.

You think about some people having consciousness, but you don't think about that whole movement.

Whatever that protest is, is undergirded by a way of thinking.

And these people were writing books narrating what the thinking was of a whole generation of people.

They weren't.

David Walker was not by himself.

He was not by himself.

If he was, we would never know about the appeal.

It would have died.

Drusilla Dungey Houston was not by herself.

Her work influenced and went out to people like Arthur Schomburg.

Her work went to W.E.B.

du Bois, who was her influence, who initially influenced her by writing a book called the Negro in 1906.

But long before we Du Bois, you have people in Africa who are writing that influence.

Du Bois, we've got this intellectual history of resistance, and we need to be connected to it.

We need to understand it.

So the books that Black Classic Press publishes, especially those early books, are intended to be a reflection of that stream of thought.

You see, it isn't a matter.

And it's not something I talk about.

It's not something I go around lecturing about.

And all of that stuff, I don't do that.

The work is there for you to see.

All you have to do is look at those books and you'll see the resistance that Casey Hayford, for example, you'll see Casey Hayford When Ethiopia.

It's the Ethiopian unbound, 1911.

This brother is talking about culture and he's talking about the import importance of us wearing African clothes and taking on African names no matter where we are in the diaspora.

Casey Hayford, and it was hailed when he was writing in 1911.

It's hailed as literature, as Pan African literature.

So black folks in the Caribbean take on Caseley Hayford.

Black folks in the.

In the US Take on Caseley Hayford.

Black folks in Africa, now you gotta.

Casey Hayford was a lawyer, and he was in the Gold coast of Africa in 1911.

The whole gold coast was controlled.

It wouldn't be free for another 40, 40 years.

There he's citing the importance.

He does a book.

That book, Ethiopia Unbound, I believe Rogers used as the model for his Superman to Man.

I believe that Rogers book wasn't published until 2018.

Casey Ha's book was published in 2011.

But if you look at them side by side, it's a similar thing.

In case Lee Hayford, you have a brother who is arguing with this guy who is a member of Parliament, and they're going back and forth talking about.

And Casey Hayford just beats him up with a history lesson that by the time the cat comes off, I think they're on the train or whatever they're on.

By the time he comes off of it, he's staggering.

That's what Roger's guy does in Gosh, Superman, the man.

It's exactly the same thing, except the guy's a Pullman porter who rod with.

With what Rogers was.

You know, he performed as a Pullman porter at different times.

The bottom line is this.

This narrative that the black man is constantly countering the stereotypic myths that the white man is throwing at him.

And he's counteracting them with history.

He's counteracting, and he ends up beating up the white cat.

So I think.

I really think that Rogers used that as a model to get to his.

It doesn't matter.

The point is that more than 100 years ago, these cats were challenging white racism.

They were challenging it intellectually, you see, in an effort to try and reach our minds.

And just like David Walker did.

Yeah, yeah.

This is incredible.

Incredible.

So you've.

So.

So there's.

There's a lot here.

There's this.

This is fantastic.

And you.

You've touched on what.

My third question is, is we.

During this part of the conversation, we.

We.

We usually transition to leaving a legacy.

Right.

What are you, you know, le.

You're looking to do what.

What is your impact?

And you touched, I think for me, you really touched on that in terms of what the impact of these books that you've published to make accessible.

Like, you don't have to go out there and lecture about it.

You don't have to.

The books are there, right?

Go into a bookstore, pick up the book published by bcp, and here it is.

This, this is the legacy.

This is what you've.

This is to work.

The, that you've done.

You, you've won lifetime awards for that.

I think my question is spinning off of that.

What, as you think about, like this complete circle here of the, the writing, the intellect, the curiosity, the publishing of that genius, the printing of that.

Where do you see, like, literature and this whole cycle of book making, you know, going in the future?

Do you have any thoughts on that now?

Now you say, where do I see it going?

Are you asking about Black Classic Press specifically or in general?

I was thinking in general that I.

Would also be interested in black in general.

I'm, I'm, I'm.

I'm excited.

I'm not the happiest or the most excited I could be, but I am happy.

Okay.

I'm happy that right now what we're talking about is a group of committed booksellers, particularly black booksellers, who are committed to making sure literature gets to our community.

I could be happier, though.

I could be happier, and I think that's going to go on.

I don't think that's going to stop.

I could be happier, though, if in fact, those booksellers really took on and understand that selling books is one part of our challenge.

Publishing books, publishing, printing books is the whole deal, and that's the real challenge.

Our thing of selling books is great, and white folks are making enough money off books that they'll continue to publish books that we can sell, but they're only going to publish those books that are popular enough to make a dime.

George Jackson said before he was assassinated, being black is not popular, which, which means that you can't always count on making a dime.

If, if you're really dependent on getting the message out, you can't count on that.

So somehow or the other, somehow or the other, we've got to support our oppressors that are turning this stuff out for us as an alternative to what the white folks are doing.

And when I'm saying white folks, I'm equating that to major, major publishers, because that's who they are.

Now, you mentioned Walter Mosley earlier and his publishing his book with me.

I don't know if you remember, but Walter came to me to publish his book.

And he came to me because he wanted to publish with a black public publisher.

And I don't know if you knew why.

It sounded ridiculous to me at the time.

He wanted to publish with me and a black publisher because he felt he had watched all of the writers before him, and at some point, black writers particularly peaked, and then they were cast on the trash heap.

Walter saw that as a possibility for himself, so he wanted to make sure that.

That he supported black publishing so when the white publishers were ready to cast them away, we would still have a way to publish his books.

It seemed ridiculous to me at the time.

It no longer seems ridiculous because I've.

I've seen so many black writers who were popular get cast aside because they weren't selling enough books.

We've got to control our books.

Yeah, we've got to control our books.

And then the last part of it is we've got to have the capacity to publish our books.

I mean, to print our books.

We've got to have that.

That should be a goal that we maintain.

How is it possible, you have to tell me this.

How is it possible that every book.

Every book that's published in this country that's public, I'm not even talking about the ones that's in China.

Printed.

Every book that's printed in this country.

Every book that's printed in this country is printed by a white printing company, except those that are printed by black Classic Press.

How's that possible?

We should have 10.

We should have 20 companies printing books.

Yeah.

People obviously want to.

Want to print with black companies because that's what everyone tells us when they come to us.

Our challenge has been getting the word out to enough people so that they know there is a source to print.

But the same way I'm saying there's a source to print with us, that market is large enough to support timber printers.

We've got to be able to see beyond.

And I know you know this because we've talked before.

Okay.

Yeah.

We've got to be able to see beyond being a.

A distribution, A sale name, a distribution, but a sales point for these white publishers.

Right.

We've got to see something beyond that.

We've got to.

We have to.

Must.

Yeah.

And let me put a plug in right here.

Because I survive and I exist because they are a group of independent black publishers who do see beyond that.

So we print books for Third World press.

We print books for a lot of people.

We print books for White companies, we print books for black companies.

But the black companies who print with us usually are with us because it is their intent to have a source in our community, a black source that they can come to and that they can print their books similar to what Walter was saying, but they see the necessity of doing it.

Now, I don't expect to be in this position in this business that much longer.

I don't know who will step up and fill that void.

But someone needs to do it and possibly fill the void many times so that we don't lose control of that important aspect of our history and our legacy.

Our ancestors understood it, we have the capacity to do it, and we should do it.

Yeah, I'm reconvicted.

I know we've had this conversation before, but yeah, I definitely feel reconvicted about that.

That is 100% accurate.

I'm there with you.

Okay, so.

So we're nearing the end here.

Talked about legacy and the importance of what, what you see moving forward, what has to happen.

And I hope some entrepreneurial minded people out there who are listening to this podcast right now take up the charge just laid down by Bible coats, because that is something that we could definitely use more of.

So as we begin to wrap up the show, I want to do a quick recap for everyone in case they did not get a chance to write down those books.

So I'm a first.

Start with the, the two individuals you talked about in the beginning and just say any book they wrote, you need to go check them out.

But you talked about J A Rogers and you talked about Dr.

Ben Yakkinen is how I pronounce.

And it's fine because even, even Doc Ben, all kind of pronunciations named.

He would, he would answer to all of them.

Okay.

Okay.

Mine is Joe Cannon.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Definitely you want to check out any of those books.

Wide number of books, but those are fantastic.

Of course they're on mahoganybooks.com but the particular titles that you definitely, that you mentioned in particular were wonderful.

Ethiopians, Children of Us.

Priscilla Dungy, Houston.

Yeah, Priscilla Dungy.

Drusilla.

Drusilla Dungey, Houston.

That's wonderful.

Ethiopians, Children of the sun is George Wells Parker.

Okay.

George Wells Parker.

And then Glory, African glory is J.C.

deGraff Johnson.

Okay.

Okay, fantastic.

And I grabbed an honorable mention just because it's something that I want to go back and read for sure as well.

But you, I mentioned Ethiopian Unbound.

Okay.

I think I froze up.

Or you froze up.

Look like both of us froze up now.

I Don't know whether you can hear me.

We're back in.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

We're back in here now.

So, yes, I was just mentioning that the last book, well, one that, that I put an asterisk by was Ethiopian Unbound.

Ethiopia Unbound, yes.

And that's Casely Hayford.

Okay.

Okay, fantastic.

So got those books there.

We will list those in the show notes for everyone to check out.

And of course, head on over to mahoganybooks.com use our coupon code and you can save 10% on those.

Those books.

So do you have a quote you want to share with us from any of the books that anything?

May not be the ones that you spoke about here, but I'm just curious if you had a.

Had a quote you wanted to share.

The quotes that I have, and I prepared a couple of them before this, and I've dropped some that stand with me.

Now, I always think back on the one that I gave earlier from George Jackson, and that is being black is not popular.

The thing I like about that quote and why it's so memorable to me, as I try to remember some other ones, is George Jackson is saying, really, you're not doing this for money.

You're not doing it for love.

You're doing it because it has to be done.

It's not popular to do this.

You're going to catch hell from everybody.

You can catch help, probably from your mother, your father and other people, but you have to go forward.

So I think about George Jackson.

There's a piece in Soul Dead Brother, which we do not publish, but George was such an inspiration.

I'm just going to go on.

This is not a quote.

I'm asking people to read Soul Dad Brother, where George talks with Angela Davis.

Now, George was a master of the martial arts.

He's a master, used to practice and work the martial arts.

And there was this one time that he and Angela Davis were in court together and the guards went after him and he fought him off.

Okay.

They took him out of the courtroom.

So he was writing Angela Davis after that.

And he says, today, you know, I had to do this, I had to do that.

He said, there were.

There are a thousand different ways to kill a man, and we practice and stuff like that.

And he said, today was my day of fighting.

I long to see your style.

You know, whoever reads that is going to know that I quoted it out of context.

But the heart of what he's saying is there.

He was asking her to come forward.

He wasn't asking her to fight in the Court, which she never did, but he was asking her to be resistful.

To be resistful.

And he wanted to see that style.

Yeah, those are thoughts that I'll close with.

You know.

Okay.

Love it.

I love it.

Okay.

All right, so our very last question before we.

Before we wrap up the show completely here is, I love to ask everyone who visits with us on this show is why do black books matter to you?

You know.

You know, when we start talking about black books, black books are like.

They're, like, sacred in and of themselves.

They're sacred treasure houses, like, each one, and collectively, they are a treasure house.

So we're talking about black books as being the vibranium of black people.

You know, it's like.

It's like if you connect with this now, you.

You can't just touch it.

You can't just touch the book.

Although there is power.

There is some power in touching old books now.

I will testify to that.

But you get even more power when you crack those covers and you go inside and read them.

So.

So they are.

They're a repository in one sense, a treasury in a sense.

But they also are the radium of our strength.

You know, they're.

They're what gives us or can give us.

I should say, can give us our strength.

Black books are essential to our existence.

And as testimony to that, you see what those people go after.

They go after the books.

Yeah, they go after the books.

Because without the books, it's like Malcolm, who would say, you know, if you don't know your history, then somebody gonna tell you your history.

You know, they're gonna tell you your history.

They're gonna tell you who you are.

And that's something that we can't tolerate.

Black books are the receipts.

They're the receipts our ancestors left us to know who we are, and we have to treasure those.

That's probably longer of a reflection than you want, but look, that's what it is, you know?

No, no, no.

They're all.

That's perfect.

I think it.

You know, I think that's.

That's one of the things I think of a lot and aggravates me when I watch news and I see all the bannings and the.

The hubbub about CRT and what has been a.

What's the word?

Unsalable fact is that from the time that Europeans began kidnapping black folk out of Africa, they have went.

One of their main strategies have been to keep books out of our hands, to put books in our hands that they could dictate to us what they wanted us to know.

But for sure, anything that would provide a sense of being, a sense of love, connection, language, anything that would pose their insidious acts, any type of harm that resist, allow us to resist against it.

They were fourth for right in phasing that out and banning it.

And books and words have been that thing for hundreds of years, and it consists of consistently is happening today.

And it just.

It drives me absolutely mad that we aren't more outraged at it.

So I.

However long you want to talk about it, I'm here to talk about it because it's something that is deep within myself.

Derek, what you're saying is so true.

And what we have to get is that this is the nature.

It's the nature of conquest.

You can go back to the earliest, earliest, earliest civilizations and wherever those civilizations were.

Africa, Middle East, Europe, it doesn't matter.

The conqueror came in and the conqueror destroyed whatever knowledge the people had of themselves.

That's the way you enslaved people.

That's the way you have enslaved them.

So when the European came into Africa, they saw.

And gosh, there's another book, and I'm blanking on the name of it right now that we publish, that talks about Africa before the European conquest.

And that whole book is based on the narratives.

It's based on the narratives of Europeans where they talk about how grand the cities are, how polished the people are, how this is.

These are the narratives before the Europeans went in and destroyed them.

So our History in Africa and the History of Destruction is a very good book.

I know that you Carry it at Mahogany that I highly recommend to people to read, and that is Born in Blackness by Howard French.

Howard continues the work of people like Chancellor Williams.

As far as I'm concerned, his book is as rough as Chancellor Williams, the Destruction of Black Civilization, Howard's book.

And Howard brings it up to current times.

But if you look at this stuff over and over and over again, I'm saying Africa, whether it's the Middle east, it's.

It's what the Muslims did.

I won't say they did this initially because Muslims had a.

They would often have an enlightened approach when.

When they conquered people, they would go in.

Initially they would go in, and this was early on, they would go in and say, look, you can keep all of your stuff, keep all of your gods and stuff like that, but you're going to pay tribute to us.

But you can worship, you can keep your culture, do what you want to do.

At a certain period that changed all around, okay, But Other than that, when you have examples of people conquering people, that what you're saying is what happens.

It goes with conquest.

So if we want to be a conquered people, if we want to be the victims of conquest, we will let our story of ourselves go.

If we don't want to be a conquered people, if we want to stand against the lies that our conquerors tell about us, then we won't let our history go.

We will treasure our books.

We will treasure our bookstores.

We will recognize those spaces as sacred spaces, because that's where the receipts are.

That's what backs us up.

And without them, we're in trouble.

This is where I need to have, like, some type of soundtrack.

I could play that.

I need some applause.

That is.

That's the mic drop of this show.

That.

Fantastic.

We should do this in the store.

Yes, we should do it in the store.

That's what we should do.

I'm just thinking I probably should do it with a lot of other folks, but we should do this in the store.

The.

The large challenge is, and I'm glad I didn't get into it too much.

I went off the one way on it, and it's okay that I did.

The real challenge, Derek, is most of the booksellers can't hold a candle to what you know about black history.

You understand what I'm saying?

And most of them are very ignorant.

And they know children's books.

They know what sells and what don't sell based on what's coming from the white publishers.

That's all they know.

What's on the best selling list.

That's all they know.

And that's really, really sad.

Really sad and unfortunate at the same time.

I'm glad they do exist.

It.

It creates a model for other people to come along and do some of the things that you guys are doing.

Yeah, I mean, and that's the.

That's the.

That again, that's the part of, you know, the legacy of book selling, book publishing, book printing, is that, you know, I learned this because I was able to learn from Karibu.

Right.

Karibu introduced me to AWB and Black Classic Press.

Right.

And Marcus Books.

There are people who have been doing this for a long, long time.

And, you know, there you have to take time and mature in your craft, and once you start maturing in that craft, you can begin to expand and push the paradigm.

But, you know, it's.

It's just about maturity and learning how to run your business and be focused on not just, you know, accruing you Know, making profits, because that's important to pay your team.

Sure, sure.

But it's, you know, it's equally as important that when someone walks into your doors, they're getting from your store what they can't get.

That's right.

From these other mainstream booksellers.

That's right.

And you know, that's an imperative of any black bookseller, is that you have to be committed to serving your community.

So.

No, that's true.

That's very, very, very, very true.

Yeah, let's, let's look at sometime doing this.

Derek and I, I really need to identify other booksellers that is worth having this conversation with.

I don't like the idea of lecturing to people.

That's really not my thing.

But sitting in a discussion in a Q and A type thing, if the person is knowledgeable.

See, because that's the other part of it.

I'm not talking to somebody who's ignorant.

They have no context to deal with it in.

But if we did that, I could see while you were talking, I was, I was thinking we need to just have some of those books on hand.

You know, we're talking and, and it would work.

Yeah, we never got to.

I never got to Carter G.

Woodson, you know, and talking about Tales of Woodson and Associated.

Never got to that, you know.

Yeah, but I think we could do that.

I think we could do it.

I'm gonna agree with you after I interview brother Tony Browder as well.

Okay.

And like just again, hearing his stories, like I'm just.

Yeah, I was sitting down talking to these people.

Like, that's, that's, that's the thing.

So let me do this.

Let me give the outro.

I appreciate everyone for sticking with us.

This has been an incredible conversation with the Paul Coates.

I call him Baba Coates because, I mean, he just means so much to me and I appreciate you being here with us.

So, folks, that is our show today.

Again, we thank our special guest, Paul Coates.

Remember to please check, check the show notes for a full list of the books discussed here today.

And of course, if you're interested in picking up one or more of these titles, which we suggest all of them to put them on your bookshelf.

We encourage you to visit our show sponsor, Mahogany Books.com the premier destination for new, classic and best selling black books.

Our show would not be possible without the hard work of Shed Life Productions.

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Peace.

And remember guys, Black books matter.

Take care.