Hakim's Bookstore

Hakim's Bookstore and Gift Shop, founded in the nineteen fifties by Dawud Hakim, holds a singular place in Philadelphia history as the first Black-owned bookstore in the city. From the beginning, Hakim stocked the shelves with titles by Black authors and books on Black history, filling a gap that mainstream bookstores ignored. During the civil rights era of the nineteen sixties, the store became a gathering space for activists and thinkers, a place where the movement's ideas circulated alongside its literature.

That visibility came at a cost: the FBI placed Hakim's under surveillance, part of its broader COINTELPRO monitoring of Black bookstores and cultural institutions nationwide. The store survived all of it. Hakim's remains open today, a more than sixty-year testament to the power of a bookstore as an act of community resistance.