No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller

No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Nelson, Vaunda Micheaux. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781541514911.

"You cant walk straight on a crooked line. You do youll break your leg. How can you walk straight in a crooked system?" Lewis Michaux was born to do things his own way. When a white banker told him to sell fried chicken, not books, because "Negroes dont read," Lewis took five books and one hundred dollars and built a bookstore. It soon became the intellectual center of Harlem, a refuge for everyone from Muhammad Ali to Malcolm X. In No Crystal Stair, Coretta Scott King Award–winning author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson combines meticulous research with a storytellers flair to document the life and times of her great-uncle Lewis Michaux, an extraordinary literacy pioneer of the Civil Rights era. "My life was no crystal stair, far from it. But Im taking my leave with some pride. It tickles me to know that those folks who said I could never sell books to black people are eating crow. Id say my seeds grew pretty damn well. And not just the book business. Its the more important business of moving our people forward that has real meaning."