Jumel Terrace Books

Jumel Terrace Books

Revolutionary & Colonial Washington Heights, Harlem, Africa, West Indies, Art, Myth, History & Literature: Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Theology, Military, Labor, Civil Rights, Negritude, Black Power.

"An Oasis for the Unrestrained Pursuit of Knowledge"
*************And a "Nugget" in the Rubbish*************

Uptown's only bookshop specializing in local history, African & American. The shop on 160th Street, open by appointment or serendipity, faces the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the headquarters of George Washington during 1776’s Battle of Harlem Heights, & our stock addresses its significance in 18th & 20th century Revolutionary American history.

As Sugar Hill, the neighborhood has retained its reputation as the intellectual & artistic home of Black America. Jumel Terrace Books follows in the tradition of bookstores serving the community since George Young’s Book Exchange opened in 1920. Before Black Studies entered college curriculums in 1968, shops like Lewis Micheaux’s House of Common Sense & Home of Proper Propaganda & Richard B Moore’s Frederick Douglass Book Center were important sources of education, aspiration & inspiration. As did our predecessors, we buy & sell very good books on our subjects.

Jumel Terrace Books - Blog

Judith Gleason on “The wild old Nigerian!”

Prefacing the Fawcett paperback, 1970. The title for Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, is taken from William Butrler Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming,” and the title for his second novel, No Longer At Ease, from T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi.” As Judith Gleason points out in This Africa, the choice of […]

On Carmen Muñez: Washington Heights Conservationist

I often tell people that nothing in Jumel Terrace Books’ shrine was purchased but found on the local streets. While most of the pieces were rescued with New Orleans’ own Delaney Martin from the fire at Botanica el Niño Jesús on Amsterdam & 163rd, nearly as many are street finds contributed by my old friend, […]