and nourishing the creative imagination of present and future writers of the Black diaspora .”
His path to becoming an iconic book publisher and digital printer included time spent as a captain of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party in the early 1970s . Coates would take books to comrades who had been incarcerated . They were always eager to get them , he told me . And , back then , when Coates was on the streets , in casual conversations with friends , ears would perk up whenever he mentioned a book – and Coates was always mentioning books .
“ A guy would say to me , ‘ Hey man , those are the books my grandfather used to tell me about ’ ” Coates recalled . Passing around a single copy of a book , waiting for someone to read it before passing it along to another proved to be a hassle . Coates ’ solution : He started duplicating books .
Soon , he began collecting used books to stock what he hoped would become a bookstore in the basement of his home in Baltimore . And he purchased a $ 300 tabletop press that he saw as the start of a printing and publishing business . It didn ’ t work out . But Coates didn ’ t give up .
Instead , he took on other jobs , and earned a college degree to help him get more money to provide for his growing family – and to purchase interesting books to share . It would take 20 years of working multiple jobs – as a librarian , curator and instructor – before he was able to devote full time to his publishing company .
“ There is a whole universe of people out there who want books that are difficult to find , important books that went out of print before they even heard of them , so we tried to provide them with the books they want ,”
Coates said . “ Those are the people who have kept us alive all of these years .” And as he looks to the future of his niche business , Coates said , “ I have no reason not to think that the inquiring minds that wanted information yesterday will want more tomorrow .”
Coates understands that the key to providing books of interest to Black readers is controlling the means of production . And he is certainly in control at Classic Black Press , where he now has a $ 300,000 printing press .
Self-determination has been a theme that echoed from the preaching of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey , whose Universal Negro Improvement Association was by far the largest Black grass roots organization in this country at the beginning of the 20th century , to the pages of Harlem Renaissance publications like the “
Survey Graphic , to the Black Panther Party of the 1960s , and the works of the Black writers whose work Coates keeps in print .
Now , in this 100th anniversary year of the New Negro edition of Survey Graphic , the racial challenges of the 1920s appear to have reemerged in 2025 , with a vengeance . Coates has taken stock of the nation ’ s troubled racial landscape and , no doubt , will respond with the kind of Black resistance that can be found in books by Black writers , old and new .
And in this way , W . Paul Coates has become the guardian of some of the world ’ s most important Black voices . •
Courtland Milloy is a columnist and former reporter of crime and politics for The Washington Post .
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