BHM: David Ruggles

The country’s first Black-owned bookstore was opened by David Ruggles in 1834.

Born into a free Black family in Connecticut in 1810, Ruggles was exposed early to the abolitionist movement. His interest in the movement grew when he moved to New York in 1825, which was “unsafe for black people as Public discrimination and insulting behavior toward was rampant.” Due to the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, “any Black person in the state of New York was liable to arrest as a fugitive from slavery and…would be denied the right of trial by jury.” and Ruggles himself narrowly escaped such a kidnapping attempt.

He soon began working for abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator as a traveling salesman and speaker. Ruggles used these trips “to urge more black people to support the anti-slavery press and better their own economic, cultural and social condition. He continued this message by opening his own bookstore, stocked with abolitionist and feminist publications. He later expanded to include a reading room and lending library, as most of the city’s literary hubs excluded Black people.

Although there was a joiner’s fee, Ruggles’s reading room was free to city visitors, a nod that it was safe for those escaping slavery. One such visitor was Frederick Douglass, whom Ruggles took in, hiding him for several days before sending him with money and letters of introduction to fellow abolitionists in New Bedford.

It is said that Ruggles would help more than a thousand men and women escape from slavery. His bookstore was much more than a literacy space, as these books were providing “knowledge to support and strengthen the abolitionist movement.”