PBSNewsHour aired a segment on Marcus Books, Oakland, Calif., "the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the country" and "hallowed ground for some."
Blanche Richardson, daughter of Julian and Ray Richardson, who founded Marcus Books in 1960, after establishing a printing business, said about her parents, "Part of the basis of their relationship was their love of literature when they were teenagers. And it stayed like that. I mean, they, they always read together. They read to each other. They just had a love of books...."
"And they would really scour the country looking for books about Black people. At that time, very few Black people were being published. My parents saw the need for Black people to have a source of information about themselves."
Granddaughter Jasmine Johnson added: "They were publishing all kinds of things--posters, artwork--but they were also republishing Black books that had gone out of print... Success Printing turned into Richardson Printing and then turned into Marcus Books."