HistoricSiteMarkers
Postwar & Contemporary

Hakim's Bookstore and Gift Shop

Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Founded in the 1950s by Dawud Hakim, it was the first Black-owned book-store in Phila. special-izing in Black history and titles by Black authors. A civil rights and Black activism gathering space in the 1960s, it was surveilled by the FBI along with other Black bookstores.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

Founded in the 1950s by Dawud Hakim, this Philadelphia shop was the city's first Black-owned bookstore devoted to Black history and authors—a place where readers could find their own story on the shelves. Through the 1960s it became a gathering point for civil rights organizing and Black activism. That prominence also drew the eye of the FBI, which surveilled Hakim's along with other Black bookstores of the era.

Why it matters

Hakim's shows how a neighborhood bookstore could serve as an intellectual and organizing hub of the Black freedom struggle—and how such spaces became targets of government surveillance.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

West Philadelphia in the 1950s was home to a large and vibrant Black community, part of a city that had drawn generations of African American families north in search of work, safety, and opportunity. It was a place of churches, businesses, and neighborhood institutions—and, increasingly, of intellectual and political life.

When Dawud Hakim opened his bookstore in that decade, the modern civil rights movement was gathering force nationwide. Bookstores devoted to Black history and Black authors were more than shops; they were places where a community could see its own story taken seriously and stocked on the shelves.

By the 1960s, Philadelphia—like cities across the country—had become a center of civil rights organizing and rising Black activism. Spaces where people could gather, read, argue, and plan took on real importance, and a bookstore could become a hub of that ferment.

People & events

Dawud Hakim founded what the marker records as the first Black-owned bookstore in Philadelphia specializing in Black history and titles by Black authors. In an era when such books were often hard to find in mainstream shops, that focus made the store a destination—a place where readers could find their own history and heritage in print.

Through the 1960s, Hakim's grew into a gathering space for civil rights and Black activism, the kind of storefront where ideas circulated as freely as the books. To sit among those shelves was to be part of a conversation about freedom, identity, and change.

That very prominence drew unwanted attention. The marker notes that the store was surveilled by the FBI, along with other Black bookstores—part of a broader pattern in which the federal government monitored Black activist spaces during the era. The shop's importance to its community and its interest to those watching that community were, in a sense, two sides of the same coin.

Its place in the American story

Hakim's shows how a neighborhood bookstore could function as an intellectual and organizing center of the Black freedom struggle. Beyond selling books, such spaces nurtured a sense of shared history and possibility, connecting readers to authors and ideas that mainstream institutions too often ignored.

The store's history also opens a window onto government surveillance of Black activism. That Black bookstores were watched at all reveals how threatening the free exchange of ideas within Black communities could seem to those in power—and how central these modest storefronts were to the movement's life.

Taken together, the shop embodies a truth that runs through the civil rights era: culture and politics were inseparable. A place that sold books about Black history helped make Black history, and its story belongs to the larger American account of how ordinary institutions carried an extraordinary struggle.

If you visit

You're in West Philadelphia, on a city street rather than at a grand landmark, and that ordinariness is worth savoring. The power of a place like this lies in imagining the daily life it once held—customers browsing, conversations sparking, a community finding itself on the shelves.

Read the inscription and picture the store in its prime in the 1960s: a small storefront that mattered enough to become a gathering place, and enough to be watched. Let that double truth shape how you see the block around you.

As part of a Philadelphia history walk, this marker pairs naturally with the city's rich African American heritage sites. Take it as an invitation to seek out a good book on the era, and to remember that some of the most important spaces in the Black freedom struggle were as humble, and as vital, as a neighborhood bookstore.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

Plan your visit

Nearby

Make a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.

Museums & culture

Attractions

Food & drink

Places to stay

Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · Dawud Hakim

Themes & tags

African American HistoryCivil RightsLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Paul Robeson (1898-1976)

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Paul Robeson was a rare figure of towering talent — a football star at Rutgers, a Columbia-trained lawyer, and then a world-renowned concert singer and actor celebrated for his interpretations of African American spirituals. His outspoken activism on race and labor drew fierce backlash during the Cold War, and his career and travel were curtailed for years. He spent his final years in quiet retirement at this Philadelphia home.

African American HistoryCivil Rights

Crystal Bird Fauset

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Crystal Bird Fauset lived here when, in 1938, she won a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and became the first Black woman elected to any state legislature in the United States. A gifted organizer and speaker, she later advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt on race relations within the wartime Office of Civilian Defense. Her career opened doors in electoral politics that had long been barred to Black women.

African American HistoryWomen's History

Muhammad's Temple of Islam #12

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2016

This building was Pennsylvania's first Nation of Islam house of worship and the heart of Philadelphia's African American Muslim community through the 1950s and 60s. Under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, it drew notable teachers and administrators—including Malcolm X and Wallace D. Muhammad—during a pivotal period in Black religious and political life. The temple served as a gathering place for faith, education, and community organizing.

African American HistoryCivil Rights

The MOVE Bombing

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2017

On May 13, 1985, a long-simmering standoff between Philadelphia police and the Black liberation group MOVE erupted into catastrophe on Osage Avenue. Police dropped a bomb from a state helicopter onto the group's rowhouse, and the fire that followed was allowed to burn — killing eleven MOVE members, five of them children, and destroying 61 homes in the surrounding Black neighborhood. It remains one of the only times an American city bombed its own residents.

Civil RightsAfrican American History