Familiar skillsets

Throughout the first two months of this year, while many local businesses raced to self-educate about mutual aid strategies and how to best support immigrant employees and customers, Black Garnet Books (BGB) in Midway steadily drew from a skill set rooted in generations of organizing and advocacy.

Originally founded by Dionne Sims in the summer of 2020, BGB is now owned by Terresa Hardaway, PhD, who described the recent and ongoing occupation as “much of the same type of oppression we experience daily.”
Focused on elevating Black authors and founded “to address racial inequality within the publishing and literary industries, both nationally and within the state of Minnesota,” BGB carried on with all its usual author readings and community events this past winter. The staff, many of whom have a background in community organizing, simply shifted into high gear, as far as advocacy, legal-rights education, and producing protest gear.

That work included partnering with Blackbird Revolt to offer multiple donation-based, screen-printing events to provide abolitionist art and attire. That protest art has also been available for purchase in the bookstore, along with free safety- and legal-rights-related resources. BGB hosted book donations and distributions to families who were sheltering at home, and they participated in fundraisers for local immigrant rights organizations including MN Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, and the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota.

Many of these efforts continue today.

“We are a resilient people and work under conditions that often isolate and harm us,” Dr. Hardaway said. “We have always, in a sense, been prepared to come together as a community to fight for our people.”

Dr. Hardaway described the bookstore’s greater community as “thankful for the space to come together under occupation, to create art and discuss what’s going on.” As customers grapple with what happened – and continues to happen – in the Twin Cities and outlying areas, BGB maintains a safe place for reading, learning, discussion, and action-planning.

Black Garnet Books will serve as the bookseller at Ibram X. Kendi’s author talk and signing at Westminster Presbyterian Church on March 14 (doors open 6 p.m., program 7 p.m.). Black Collective Foundation will host Kendi’s talk on his newest title, “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age.”