"Our children need to be literate in who they are," Mustafaa Shabazz, owner of Ujamaa Bookstore in Columbus, Ohio, told the Columbus Dispatch. "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.”
Shabazz opened Ujamaa Bookstore--named after the fourth principle of Kwanzaa, which is also the Swahili word for cooperative economics--in Columbus's Driving Park neighborhood in 1997. Initially the store had its own space, but Shabazz eventually decided to downsize and share space with a beauty supply store.
"When Amazon came, sales plummeted," he explained. "It was a hard decision to make; either you close down, or you merge. But it was genius. It worked."
Ujamaa Bookstore sells fiction and nonfiction on subjects ranging from Moorish rule in Spain to financial literacy to Black history. Shabazz carries books for all ages, and sources many books directly from their authors; he's become friends with many of those authors over the years.
Shabazz was inspired to open a bookstore of his own while he was attending Ohio State University in the 1970s. He was looking for a book about Marcus Garvey for an assignment and could not find one at any of the local bookstores. He said: "I'm like, 'When I grow up, I'm going to put a Black bookstore here.' "