Meet Our Winter 2025–26 Partner Bookstore! Baldwin & Co
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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James Baldwin
15 min read
The bookstore is named after and inspired by James Baldwin, with his quotes on the walls and murals of him dominating the space. Understanding Baldwin's literary legacy and civil rights advocacy provides essential context for the store's mission.
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Coffeehouse
13 min read
The article references the 'penny university' tradition of coffeehouses as intellectual gathering places. The historical role of coffeehouses in fostering Enlightenment-era discourse and social change directly parallels DJ Johnson's vision for Baldwin & Co.
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Credit union
12 min read
The partnership with Credit Human and the Financial Health Center is central to the store's expanded mission. Understanding how credit unions differ from banks and their historical role in serving underserved communities illuminates why this partnership is significant.
Baldwin & Co bookstore is housed in a restored art deco building on the corner of Elysian Fields and St. Claude Avenues in the Marigny District of New Orleans. New Orleans, a city known for big groups of people going out and having fun together, was suffering especially during the covid lockdown—an economic report showed their small businesses closing at nearly double the national median rate—when returned native son DJ Johnson opened the bookstore and cafe in 2021, presciently saying he was anxious to return people to gathering face to face. He had already opened an art bar on the same block, property he had bought recently near where he grew up, with the goal of providing a gathering place that “could be an artistic home for creatives and intellectuals” in New Orleans, a place “where you can come and engage in stimulating conversations over cocktails and discuss some pending political, social, and economic issues with a nice atmosphere.” He has spoken of fostering places where “the chairs fill with some of the brightest minds in the city: politicians, professors, entrepreneurs, students, and engaged residents.” “It’s hard to find those spaces in New Orleans,” he has said, “particularly being Black-owned.”
This vision of creating a point of connection that would be fun, enriching, and empowering was coalescing in his vision for the bookstore. “I wanted to provide nourishment for the soul of New Orleans,” he said. And
I wanted to create an intellectual hub for Blacks in the city. It was important for us to have a space where we felt like we could go and create. Go where we can feel like the best version of ourselves. Somewhere we have access to information and access to our greatest thinkers within our history and legacy. A lot of times, you know, we don’t know how powerful we can be until we read our history. I wanted to create a space where that history lived on the shelves and was a testament to our greatness.
He saw the company of books as “a school of enlightenment.” He has invoked the old cultures of the coffee house “penny university,” a bookstore as a gathering of minds.
He associated this vision with the work of James Baldwin, which he had discovered as a readerly child in a family in which a single mother of seven encouraged reading among her children and
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