Lewis H. Michaux
| Lewis H. Michaux | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1895 Newport News, Virginia |
| Died | 1976 |
| Occupation | bookseller |
| Known for | African National Memorial Bookstore |
Lewis H. Michaux (1895–1976) was a Harlem bookseller and civil rights activist. Between 1932 and 1974 he owned the African National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem, New York City, one of the most prominent African-American bookstores in the country.
Michaux was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1895—his birthday is uncertain—the son of Henry Michaux and Blanche Pollard. Michaux had little formal education. Before coming to New York he worked as a pea picker, window washer and deacon in the Philadelphia, church of his brother, Lightfoot Solomon. Michaux died in 1976. Michaux was married to Bettie Kennedy Logan and they had one son. His brother, Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, acted as an advisor for U.S. President Harry S. Truman and helped to build a 500+ unit housing development for the poor.
The bookstore was founded by Michaux in 1932 on 7th Avenue and stayed there until 1968, when Michaux was forced to move the store to West 125th Street (on the corner of 7th street) to give space to the State Harlem office building. The bookstore finally closed in 1974 after another row with authorities over its location.
Michaux stimulated a generation of students, intellectuals, writers and artists He called his bookstore "House of Common Sense and the Home of Proper Propaganda". The store became an important reading room of the Civil Rights Movement. While Izzy Young's Folk Center further south in Greenwich Village became a hang-out during the folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including the rising Bob Dylan, the Memorial Bookstore up in Harlem was a rare place for black people and scholars and anyone interested in literature by, or about, African Americans, Africans, Caribbeans and South Americans. In the early 1960s folk and popular music, and the civil rights movement, where inter-related, overlapping and "inspiring the growth and creativity of each other" as historians Izzerman and Kazin write Michaux's bookstore had over 200,000 texts and was the nation’s largest on its subject. Everyone, white and black, was encouraged to begin home libraries and those who were short of money were allowed to sit down and read.
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