PanAfrican Sites of Resistance: Black Bookstores and the Struggle to Re-Present Black Identity

This project investigated how Black Bookstores functioned historically as PanAfrican "sites of resistance"--institutions engaged in a battle with White mainstream institutions over the meaning of Black identity. Qualitative analysis was performed at Black bookstores in England, the U.S. and Jamaica in order to analyze the bookstore members' perspective. Oral history interviews, archival data, and ethnographic data were collected at the local, national and international levels. Sites and subjects were obtained via snowball sampling and the data was cross-validated against sites, subjects, and the published literature. These findings appeared across sites: (1) store "members" were political activists who conceptualized the shop as a political "space" in which the objective was to "liberate" the minds of Black people by "de-constructing" racist notions of Black identity and "re-producing" the "truth" about Black/African identity. (2) As PanAfrican "sites of resistance" for the local and inter-national Black community, black bookstores shared the following characteristics: serving as a critical meeting, organization and recruiting center for Black activists; as a gathering place, which linked writers, activists, intellectuals and the "every day" Black community; serving as informal debate and alternative education centers. (3) they served as a critical node in an international network of resistance; (4) Black bookstores experienced repression by U.S. FBI agents, the British Police, and racist organizations. (5) Black bookstores used a variety of strategies to withstand this repression.