Detroit’s first Black-owned bookstore has made it a national preserved treasure. Vaughn’s Bookstore, located on the city’s west side on Dexter Ave., has been the recipient of a $15,000 preservation grant according to Atlanta Black Star. The grant was issued through the National Park Service’s Underrepresented Communities Grant program, was awarded nearly $3 million since its inception in 2014.
The store’s owner is former Michigan House of Representatives member Edward “Ed” Vaughn. For 40 years, Vaughn owned and operated the bookstore. “We were a game-changer,” he said.
“There had not been a bookstore here before, and of course I got into the business because I was looking for a book called ‘A Hundred Years of Lynchings’ by Ginsberg, and I was told downtown that they didn’t have the book in stock and I decided that I’d see if I could find it and then when I found it and my friends at the post office said that they’d like to read that and other Black books, so I began to order them and sell them out of the trunk of my car” he said. By 1962, Vaughn’s Bookstore had become a staple in the community. Black public figures including Malcolm X and Elijah Mohammed held speaking engagements at the shop during the civil rights movement.
“There was sort of an awakening in the community from New York, we were hearing about things happening there. I sold a, a magazine called ‘The Liberator,’ and so the consciousness was being developed and of course ‘Mohammed Speaks’ and those things were happening then, so there was a consciousness that was being raised throughout the community,” Vaughn said.
Five years later, the store would be destroyed during the the city’s 1967 rebellion, they rebuilt before officially shuttering its doors in the 1990s. Proposed restoration plans include revitalizing the storefront and the Dexter Ave. strip mall.
“As the first Black-owned bookstore in Detroit and a hub of African-American journalism and conversation, Vaughn’s Bookstore played a key role in the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s,” Mark Rodman, Michigan’s state historic preservation officer said. “An important priority of the National Register program is to document those sites associated with significant events that have contributed to broad patterns of our history.”
