The first time she laid eyes on Julian Richardson on the campus at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, Raye Gilbert Richardson told him she would marry him one day. It was the 1930s, and he told her to go home and grow up. They would later not only marry but together build Marcus Books, the oldest Black bookstore in the country, which currently has a storefront in Oakland.
Both Richardsons were influenced by the Black nationalism of Marcus Garvey, as evidenced by the name they gave their bookstore, and the instruction they received at Tuskegee, where they had only Black teachers. These included Carter G. Woodson, the creator of Black History Week, and George Washington Carver, the scientist.
Raye had been one of the scholarship students assigned to care for Carver. Her daughter Blanche Richardson, who now owns Marcus Books following her parents’ deaths, says, “He would get up well before dawn [to tend to his plants], and they would have to wait for him to fall asleep to launder his clothes because his focus was [solely on his work].” Raye would ask Carver why he wouldn’t accept the many offers of financial assistance he received—a bone of contention between Carver and Washington. People threw money at Carver, but he refused to be bought; money was unimportant to him.
When I interview Blanche, the heir to the legacy of her remarkable parents, she explains, “My dad came to Tuskegee from Birmingham, Alabama, at 16.” Raye was 15 when she enrolled at Tuskegee. Later, when Julian was discharged from the army, he and Raye decided to move from Los Angeles to the vibrant Black community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Julian took a Greyhound bus to San Francisco, and at the station, he met Maya Angelou’s stepfather, who befriended him. Even though they were strangers, Angelou’s stepfather kindly offered to let Julian and Raye stay in his home until they got on their feet.
Raye and Julian stayed with Angelou, her mother, and her stepfather for a few years. Julian had studied lithography at Tuskegee, and his first job in San Francisco was as a Linotype operator at the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle hired him because they thought he was white. Julian let them believe so to support his family. He eventually left the Chronicle to open his own business, Success Printing, in the Fillmore district of San Francisco.
The first printshop was established in 1960. Raye and Julian put several Black books in the window. Success Printing took care of the printing needs of the Fillmore community, its churches, organizations, and businesses. The couple were avid readers, one of the things that had attracted them to each other. They scoured the country for Black books, occasionally lending them to friends, who frequently did not return them. They began ordering two copies of each book, and the extra copies would go into the storefront window of the printshop. The printshop became the foundation for Marcus Books.
The store attracted influential Black nationalists beyond the ones the Richardsons had studied with. Blanche mentioned to me the time that Malcolm X visited the store. He had heard of the Richardsons and spent time with Julian discussing strategies to deal with the issues facing Black people. When they first met at the store, Julian jokingly offered to buy him a pork-chop sandwich. Being a good Muslim, Malcolm laughed and declined the offer.
A young Cornel West was also a frequent visitor to the store, and he engaged in deep discussions with Raye and Julian.
The bookstore and printshop had several locations in San Francisco, moving to a huge building on McAllister, then to a restored Victorian on Fillmore between Post and Sutter, before the shops settled in on McAllister and Van Ness Avenue. At one point, they shared a building with the Sun-Reporter newspaper. Dr. Carlton Benjamin Goodlett, publisher of the Sun-Reporter, was an extraordinary individual. Born in 1914 in Florida, he’d persevered after tragedy struck his life early: his young sister perished in a fire, but not before saving his life. She was five and he three. He’d go on to help Black community members whenever they needed it and, according to Blanche, was one of the last physicians to make house calls.
Goodlett was a vital member of the San Francisco Black establishment (though one whose impact has often been overlooked by historians). He was like the great Mary Ellen Pleasant, who was accused of practicing black magic by the press but was known to the Black community in San Francisco as Black City Hall a century earlier because of her ability to secure jobs for Blacks. Goodlett was a powerful person without black magic. He had friends in government.
The State of California used the power of eminent domain to move Marcus Books from the building that had housed the printshop and the bookstore and served as a meeting place for many organizations, including the Black Panthers. The printshop was relocated to Richardsons’ second store, in Oakland, established to serve the East Bay community after the SF Redevelopment Agency had “redeveloped” people of color out of San Francisco.
The Richardsons’ San Francisco store closed a few years back but hopefully will reopen in 2024. However, while talking to Blanche, I note that independent stores have been closing nationwide.
She attributes the shuttering of these stores to more than just the rise of online bookstores and big box stores, saying, “Fifty percent of that, in my opinion, is from the community not supporting the store. Amazon doesn’t come and wake you up and get you out of bed and say, ‘You better order something from me.’ That’s a conscious choice you make. You can just as easily make a conscious choice to support an independent bookstore.… People cite convenience, discounts, which usually are not that great when you add shipping into it. But if the community doesn’t support you, you’re out of here, even with all of that going on, and [community is] kind of what sustains us.”
Blanche appreciates longtime supporters such as Pam Moore, who recently retired from a decades-long career as a TV newscaster. “Every year, she brings dozens of kids from the East Oakland Youth Development Center to visit the store, and she buys each of them a book.”
Black authors have complained about how editors, publishers, and bookstores have treated their books for decades. In an interview for my magazine, Konch, with famed author Terry McMillan, a supporter of Marcus Books, McMillan commented that chain bookstores push books that reinforce white prejudices about Black culture. She felt that many of these books “glorify violence and sex” and present little else than “people get killed and murdered.” Black bookstores often carry books missing from the mainstream bookstores that cater to white readers. For me, Marcus Books is a research source. My purchase of a biography about General Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., for instance, influenced my book Japanese by Spring, which, though the subject of lukewarm reviews in the United States, earned me a tour of Japan and an invitation to two Chinese universities. In China, the book became a national project, meaning that the government paid for research on the novel.
Marcus Books carries even those texts that might appear to the mainstream to have no sales worth. It was a pamphlet from the store that introduced me to the Black pope under the newly converted Constantine, the emperor. As a result, a Black pope appears in my series, which I call the Terribles—The Terrible Fours and the forthcoming Terrible Fives.
The late Randall Robinson wrote a book about reparations titled The Debt. He appeared at the bookstore several times. “He was a strong supporter and a good friend of the family and the bookstore,” Blanche says. While we talk, music by Earth, Wind & Fire plays.
“While I am usually cool with celebrities coming to the store, I was a fan when Earth, Wind & Fire came in to buy books!” Blanche remarks. “Seeing what type of books they purchased, it was clear that they were serious about Black consciousness.”
Other celebrities who have appeared at Marcus Books over the past decades include Angelou, McMillan, Toni Morrison, Iyanla Vanzant, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, Angela Davis, Chaka Khan, B.B. King, Kareem Abdu-Jabbar, Sister Souljah, Nikki Giovanni, Michael Eric Dyson, Patti LaBelle, and Walter Mosley. Photos of Black heroes line the walls of the bookstore. A picture of me was taken at a 1993 luncheon held for Morrison as I sat with Raye and Julian.
I ask Blanche about the movie she collaborated on, Made in America, which starred Whoopi Goldberg. “How was that experience?”
“They hired us to create a Black bookstore in a storefront on College Avenue,” Blanche comments. “Whoopi was to be a bookstore owner in the film. After-hours, she shopped in the fake store but never came to Marcus Books.”
Marcus Books recently made the news when a criminal smashed a large front window and stole books from the display. The bookstore has yet to hear from the mayor’s office, and the Oakland Police Department took a report but told the bookstore that commercial burglaries are a low priority. Blanche adds, “Pamela Price, the Alameda County district attorney, immediately sent a representative to offer whatever assistance we needed.”
In keeping with the historical coverage of Black culture by the mass media, while the local press provides generous coverage to white bookstores, it took a strange break-in to draw attention to Marcus Books, which carries books not only by Black nationalist authors but by integrationists as well. Additionally, the FBI was contacted and sent a copy of the break-in video. The bureau had previously taken action when the store was receiving racist calls and threatening letters, according to Blanche.
In 1968, the late director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover mounted surreptitious investigations on Black independent bookstores and hoped the bureau would persuade ordinary Black customers to spy on the activity there. He saw Marcus Garvey as a threat to the nation—even writing a memo that suggested that Garvey could be brought down with charges of mail fraud. Wherever he is, Hoover must be annoyed to see the effort to protect Garvey’s namesake store.•
Join us on February 15 at 5 p.m., when author Dave Eggers will appear in conversation with California Book Club host John Freeman and special guest Catarina Fake to discuss The Every. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
