Columbus Black-owned bookstore Ujamaa centers Black experience
The fourth principal of Kwanzaa is “ujamaa,” the Swahili word for cooperative economics.
Beyond sharing the name, Ujamaa Bookstore is a fitting representation of the practice.
For instance, Mustafaa Shabazz opened the Driving Park shop in 1997 with money he earned from running youth programs in the community.
Community members supported the bookstore, generating seed money for the Juneteenth Ohio Festival, which Shabazz ran for more than 20 years on the Near East Side and later Downtown.
And the money from the festival was invested back into the business.
“The owner gets to choose the course that he’d like to take his readers on,” said Shabazz, 61, of the Far East Side. “That’s the magic of it.”
More:Black Business Spotlight: FishBurger to continue legacy of entrepreneurship in Driving Park
As an African American bookstore, Ujamaa centers Black readers as the subject of their reality, Shabazz said. And its goal is to use literacy to build strong families in the Black community.
The shop opened in its own space at the end of a strip of businesses on East Livingston Avenue, but has since downsized. It now shares a space with Willis Beauty Supply in that same strip.
“When Amazon came, sales plummeted,” Shabazz said. “It was a hard decision to make; either you close down, or you merge. But it was genius. It worked.”
Ujamaa is one of few brick-and-mortar, Black-owned bookstores in the city and state. Nationwide estimates have hovered below 150. The African American Literature Book Club directory features 114 physical stores, while Oprah.com’s official directory lists 125—including online shops.
Shabazz has maximized his new space with a wealth of fiction and non-fiction books on everything from financial literacy and healthy eating to ancient Egyptian history and Moorish rule in Spain. He said he sources most of his books directly from authors, who have become his friends.
And customers eagerly line up for some of the authors who would visit the store for book signings.
Josephine Copeland said she first learned about the bookstore from her mother, who was a regular shopper.
“There are so many books to choose from,” said Copeland, 42, of Hanford Village, who began to shop for herself in college. “I always tell the owner, ‘OK, I have a money limit and I’m not going to be here longer than 30 minutes,’ but I’m always in there spending like hours and hours just either talking or skimming through some of the books. He has a wealth of knowledge and it’s always a warm atmosphere. I love going in there.”
Copeland also said it’s nice to have a Black-owned bookstore “up the street,” especially considering there aren’t many in Columbus.
“It doesn’t get the praise or acknowledgement that it should,” she said. “We just need to be more aware of what we have.”
Both Shabazz, Copeland and another longtime customer, Terry Elliott, have served on the Livingston Avenue Area Commission. Elliott said it was Shabazz who inspired her to join.
“I would go in there and talk to him about things like the crime and the house values,” said Elliott, 68, of Driving Park. “He was knowledgeable about all those things. And then he said, ‘Well, maybe you need to get involved so you can make a difference.’”
Elliott also said she appreciates how Shabazz interacts with people in the community.
“He does stuff like pay the little boys to clean that lot,” she said. “He can impart into them what it is to be a young Black boy growing into a young Black man, teaching them about the value of making your own dollar. I’m impressed with what he does with the people he comes into contact with. He is knowledgeable about people taking control of their lives and building wealth for themselves.”
Shabazz also is a member of the Livingston Avenue Business Association.
He remembers when it was difficult to find books on Black figures.
When he was a student at Ohio State University in the late 1970s, his English class was assigned to write a paper on their heroes. Shabazz was interested in Marcus Garvey, but failed to find any books on the activist at local stores.
“I’m like, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to put a Black bookstore here,’” he said.
Shabazz’s interest in Black history and empowerment was developed even earlier in his hometown of Toledo. Each morning before school, he and his sister would attend the Black Panthers’ breakfast program, which nourished both their bodies and minds.
“They were teaching you about Black history,” he said.
By the time Shabazz opened Ujamaa, there had been an academic movement in the U.S. known as Afrocentricity, which centered the experiences and contributions of African and African Americans in world history. The movement not only impacted literature but early hip-hop.
But over time, Shabazz noticed a change in customer interest; readers began seeking out a genre known as “urban fiction,” which often depicts some darker aspects of inner-city life.
“As a bookstore, we weren’t going in that direction,” Shabazz said. “So, we lost a lot of that business.”
More:14 independent bookstores you can support in the Columbus area
Today, the bookstore remains a resource for knowledge, especially for children. Just recently, an elementary teacher came in to buy a book on Kwanzaa because her students didn’t know about the holiday, Shabazz said.
He wishes local schools would be more willing to partner with the business.
“They just don’t order,” he said. “All I can tell you is teachers do come in and they buy out of their own pocket. They could massively order Kwanzaa books every year in public schools, but they just don’t—at least not from us.”
More:Dispatch Mobile Newsroom: Telling stories in Columbus neighborhoods
Shabazz said that doing a better job of reaching children by the time they are 10 years old would help prevent them from going down the wrong path.
“Our children need to be literate in who they are,” he said. “It’s simple. If you get the right kind of books in the kids’ hands at the right time, you’re going to change the society.”
This story is part of the Dispatch’s Mobile Newsroom initiative, which is currently focused on Driving Park and surrounding neighborhoods. Visit our reporters at the Driving Park branch library.
@miss_ethompson
Read More: Columbus Black-owned bookstore Ujamaa centers Black experience