06/27/2026
✊🏾 Saturday, August 29 will mark the first ever Black Bookstore Day in Wichita. Left on Read will celebrate with a ribbon cutting in our new space at Revolutsia.
📚 As we prepare, we want to share why this day is significant and what it means to us, including the importance of remembering and honoring those who came before us in Wichita and beyond.
📍 We invite you to join us 9 AM Tuesday, August 18 at City Hall for the official proclamation and again on August 29 for a full day of celebration.
Repost from Black Bookstore Day™
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Black bookstores are part of a long tradition of literary spaces where culture, history, learning, and community meet. For generations, they have protected stories that were ignored, dismissed, minimized, or pushed aside, while creating room for new voices to emerge.
Black-owned speaks to ownership. For us, “Black bookstore” includes ownership and also reflects something deeper: spaces shaped by Black worldview, memory, language, perspective, and stewardship. Even when shelves include authors who aren’t, the lens guiding the curation is Black.
These are places where vision, persistence, and commitment extend far beyond a transaction. Places where Blackness does not have to justify or shrink itself, and where books hold the key to our histories and futures.
August was purposefully selected. The month carries deep significance as Black August and as National Black Business Month. An August observance acknowledges both, along with a bookselling tradition dating back to 1834, when David Ruggles opened the first Black-owned bookstore in the United States.
As we prepare to celebrate Black bookstores on August 29, this effort requires integrity, clarity, and care, remembering that the legacy of Black bookstores does not belong to any single person or organization. It belongs to generations who built and sustained them.
… for the full announcement, visit Black Bookstore Day™.
Corinthian Kelly
Latasha N. Eley Kelly
Maaskelah Kimit Thomas
