Black-owned Bookstores 'Fill Our Intellectual Well'

"Yusef and I talk about this often. We were taking classes where the required reading list were books that were not readily found in bookstore chains. I used to work at Waldenbooks in New York but I shopped at Revolution Books in Harlem and Nkiru Books in Brooklyn because the books we needed for class were on the shelves. Our professor also had booksellers visit our class and he would take orders right then and there. The following week, he would haul boxes of books into the classroom. I absolutely loved that experience. The books felt very special. I still have all those books and, interestingly enough, when I had visited Yusef at his home, he also had those books. We frequented Black-owned bookstores because this is where we went to fill our intellectual well."