In 1959, a young, bookish accountant named Dawud Abdel Hakim started doing something highly unpopular: selling books about African American history written by African Americans — first from the trunk of his car and later from his namesake store on S. 52nd St. in West Philadelphia.
“In 1959 it was not popular to talk about Black history. Hakim stood tall telling the untold story,” State Sen. Vincent Hughes said at Saturday’s event. “To be in business for 64 years is no small feat.”“My father would have been overwhelmed. It would have brought tears to his eyes,” said Hakim’s daughter, Yvonne Blake, who took over when Hakim died in 1997 and now runs it with the family’s fourth-generation members. “Had it not rained we would have had even more people here.
But for Hakim, making the bookstore a success was not easy. Customers were few and profits were slow, and he had to keep his day job as an accountant for the city in order to support his wife and three daughters while running the store. Blake said it wasn’t always easy to understand her father’s tenacity and vision.“My father would take me to the bookstore and no one came in. You know when you go to a store, you expect to see people,” Blake recalled.
Lambert said that after the George Floyd protests of 2020, the UCHS, a volunteer group, began to reflect on how the organization could be of service. That lead to a call to The Enterprise Center, a business management education center in West Philadelphia, and the suggestion to help prepare the marker application for the bookstore.