At a Pride festival in October, a volunteer approached Sara Luce Look, the co-owner of Charis Books and More, and shared that decades prior, a person in her life was sexually abused. The person’s counselor suggested they go to Charis for support. Known as “the South’s oldest independent feminist bookstore,” the Decatur, Georgia, shop not only offered books that the survivor found helpful, but it also provided a safe space where they could process the abuse they experienced.
Look told Prism that the volunteer began to cry and asked for a hug. Not much of a hugger, Look said in that moment, she became one.
“It’s a story I’ve heard over and over again,” Look said. “That’s who I want us to be for people, but I wish that wasn’t a space people needed.”
Charis Books is just one in a nationwide network of independent bookstores with a dual focus on books and community-centered support. While the closures of chain bookstores have increased in recent years—intensified by the pandemic and the rise of Amazon—digital exhaustion and a depressed cultural landscape under the Trump administration have led to a dearth of community outreach and educational opportunities.
Indie bookstores nationwide are filling the gap.
Origins in Black-owned bookstores
Charis Books was first established amid a broader wave of leftist bookstores that emerged during the 1970s. These bookstores were—and continue to be—crucial cultural and intellectual centers, bringing an array of writers, leaders, and activists while also introducing liberatory literature to local communities.
For Charis’ original founders, Linda Bryant and Barbara Borgman, the store started as a community bookshop for Little Five Points, a neighborhood just north of Atlanta.
“That neighborhood became a sort of hub of different kinds of organizing, but especially lesbian, feminist, and other radical organizing,” explained Look, who became co-owner in 1998. “And Charis evolved into a feminist bookstore.”
During the 1960s and ’70s, the concept of merging activism and literature was a significant part of counterinstitutional establishments across the country. Black activists were at the vanguard of many of these movements. One such initiative started in 1968 and quickly became recognized as one of the most prominent Black-owned bookstores of the 20th century.
Leading up to the opening of Washington, D.C.’s Drum & Spear Bookstore in 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Protests overtook the nation’s capital, and there was community-wide fear around King’s murder and the future of the civil rights movement.
Members of the pivotal grassroots organization called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) knew they needed a space to center Black voices, resulting in former SNCC field secretary Charlie Cobb opening Drum & Spear Bookstore on June 1, 1968.
Home to authors not found in mainstream bookstores, Drum & Spear hosted readings, poetry performances from the likes of Sonia Sanchez and Gaston Neal, and community conversations on subjects such as Pan-Africanism. The civil rights bookstore-turned-salon was especially popular among the students of Howard University, a historically Black university.
The store closed its doors in 1974, though not before helping to facilitate “Towards a Black University,” a Howard conference that expanded Black studies nationwide.
But the existence of radical, Black-owned spaces was not without consequence. Like other Black-owned bookstores at the time, Drum & Spear was surveilled by the federal government. Activist Kwame Ture once visited Drum & Spear, and just a few weeks later, the FBI came knocking.
Declassified documents now show that the FBI’s concern extended far beyond Drum & Spear. A 1968 memo from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned of an “increase in the establishment of black extremist bookstores which represent propaganda outlets for revolutionary and hate publications and culture centers for extremism.”
Hoover instructed the government’s counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, to “locate and identify black extremist and/or African-type bookstores in its territory and open separate discreet investigations on each.” Agents were also ordered to determine “the identities of the owners; whether it is a front for any group or foreign interest; whether individuals affiliated with the store engage in extremist activities; the number, type, and source of books and material on sale; the store’s financial condition; its clientele; and whether it is used as a headquarters or meeting place.”
The consequences were chilling. The federal government targeted booksellers. The FBI dispatched undercover agents to readings and meetings and tapped phone lines. Critical spaces that anchored Black intellectual life, including Liberation Bookstore in Harlem, New York, and Marcus Books in San Francisco, eventually bowed to the pressure and closed.
But decades later, a new generation of radical independent bookstores is thriving.
Renewed public engagement
The number of independent bookstores in the U.S. has grown by 70% since 2020. But this trend first began in the early 2010s, largely driven by intersectional feminist, LGBTQIA+, and people of color–owned literary spaces that built on the legacy of their Black-owned predecessors.
One such example is Red Emma’s in Baltimore. The worker cooperative bookstore and coffee shop first opened its doors in 2004.
While radical literature is the heart of Red Emma’s, evident in its wide variety of books on sex work, Marxism, socialism, communism, Palestine, and activism, among other subjects, the bookstore follows in the legacy of anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. In practice, this means that the shop serves as both a community resource and a business model for anarchism and anti-capitalism.
There are no bosses, and no bureaucracy. As a cooperative, workers own an equal share of the business and have an equal say in business matters.
Programming is also an important part of the store’s community offerings. Recent events have included workshops on mindful journaling and seed-saving, community conversations about financing a “wrecked democracy,” a book launch party for Joshua Clark Davis’ “Police Against the Movement,” a youth-led session advocating for reparations in Maryland, and a wide range of public conversations focused on Palestine, colonialism, and U.S. imperialism.
The store’s community-focused approach extends into mutual aid. Workers offer vulnerable community members free clothing, menstrual supplies, and learning materials. But one of the store’s most defining characteristics is its pay-it-forward approach.
Customers can prepay for meals, drinks, or snacks, allowing anyone who needs something to eat or drink to order from the cafe at no additional charge.
“How we’re going to survive is taking care of each other and being in community,” said Taylor Morgan, a worker-owner at Red Emma’s. “On any given day, students, parents, unhoused people, people experiencing mental health crises, older folks—are all sitting together and sharing space for the same reason: They want a better world for themselves and everyone else.”
The term “third space,” coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, refers to an accessible gathering space for the community outside of home and work. These spaces are necessary for connection and understanding in a democratic society.
Radical bookstores across the U.S. help to fill the country’s lack of third spaces. Cafes, parks, libraries, and community centers still serve an important role, even as online spaces now dominate interactions. But algorithm-fueled online landscapes have deepened social divides. Under the watch of tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, platforms such as X are now flooded with racist, nativist, and nationalistic far-right rhetoric that has international consequences.
But the far-right’s rise has also spurred renewed public engagement, as witnessed by workers at Charis Books and Red Emma’s. This “Trump bump” phenomenon led many locals to enter these bookstores and seek community and connection for the first time.
But under Trump’s authoritarian regime, radical bookstores continue to be attacked.
Far-right groups now target bookstores that stock children’s books with LGBTQIA+, Black, and other POC characters. Sometimes it’s merely online harassment, other times it’s far more threatening. Last summer in Austin, the LGBTQIA+ feminist bookstore BookWoman was vandalized. A concrete block was thrown at a Pride flag display—one of several such attacks reported nationwide.
“It takes more than a broken window to break our resolve,” BookWoman wrote in a statement. “We are no strangers to pushback and attempts at silencing the voices of women, LGBTQA+ people, and POC. This isn’t new, and it isn’t going to stop us from living out our values.”
Threats of institutional violence once posed by COINTELPRO continue today. In states such as Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, lawmakers have introduced or passed bills imposing criminal penalties for distributing books that right-wing lawmakers have deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors.” Historically, this rhetoric is used to silence work from queer, trans, Black, and other marginalized authors.
For independent booksellers—especially those rooted in community—the struggle to stay afloat is no longer just about financially surviving Amazon. Similar to Black-owned bookstores in the past, today’s indie bookstore movement defends the fundamental right to read freely.
“People might think people are scared or receding, but it’s the contrary,” said Meg Berkobien, a worker-owner at Red Emma’s. “I’ve never seen so many people writing in, wanting to be part of communities like ours. People are not as scared. Actually, people are getting braver all the time.”
And while online sales once threatened their very existence, independent bookstores are finding new forms of community support that extend beyond customers walking through the door. Online platforms such as Bookshop have become an important lifeline, allowing readers to buy books online from indie bookstores, which guarantees a portion of the sale.
Bookshop also plays a powerful role for readers, especially those who are homebound, working double shifts, or in rural areas far from their nearest bookstore. The general public has watched Amazon aggressively reshape the book industry, making ethically buying books an intentional act. Through Bookshop, readers who care about places such as Red Emma’s and Chicago’s Semicolon now have an alternative way to buy books while supporting indie stores’ mission.
Amid escalating book bans; campaigns to censor library materials; and mounting political pressures on cultural institutions such as museums, archives, and public media, independent bookstores are leaning into their legacies as intellectual and cultural community hubs. As public infrastructure continues to buckle under the ideological and financial strain of the Trump administration, radical independent bookstores provide essential civic spaces and cultural safeguards.
Being a bookstore in America today carries a different set of responsibilities. Beyond selling books, these spaces help communities take action to organize, curate, and preserve intellectual expression.
Editorial Team:Tina Vasquez, Lead EditorCarolyn Copeland, Top EditorRashmee Kumar, Copy Editor
[Costa Beavin Pappas is a graduate of American University with bylines in ELLE, Oprah Daily, Teen Vogue, Newsweek, and Business Insider, among others. He splits his time between New York City and Cairo, Egypt.]
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This story was originally published in English at Prism.
