Content Warning: This article includes a brief mention of murder/gun violence in the 3rd paragraph
Coming into Sassafras Center for the first time, People’s Solidarity Hub staff members often hear the pleasantly surprised voices of newcomers seeing the expansive and color-coded collections of political novels and workbooks lining the back wall. It is a diverse selection, containing new releases and old classics that provide language, theory, and reflections about political struggles that span various movements and multiple decades.
A snapshot of the book collection in Sassafras Center
The shelves in the main space of Sassafras contain a small sample of the hundreds of books that have been donated to the space over the past four years. Some of the donations come from PSH users who have done author talks in the space for their own works, like the Liberation Stories author’s panel in July of 2025 or the “TORN / TORN OPEN” open workshop earlier this year.
During the workshop based on their conversational works “Torn” and “Torn Open”, Bianca Nozaki-Nasser and Anna Storti engage in dialogue about racial, gender, and sexual legacies of US imperialism;
Photo credit: @time.bianca on Instagram
A large majority of the books come from the Internationalist Bookstore. Opened in 1981 by organizer Bob Sheldon, the Internationalist Bookstore gave students and non-students a challenging and engaging political space to explore anti-war and other radical, internationalist philosophies. The history of the Internationalist Bookstore is marred by the unsolved murder (and presumed assassination) of Bob Sheldon in 1991, whose death and the political context around it, leaves many unanswered questions. The history also includes the dozens of volunteers who took up the helm of running the Internationalist Bookstore after Sheldon’s murder, and continued to do so until it closed in 2016.
This archival “Celebrate People’s History” print discusses the life and legacy of radical activist and organizer Bob Sheldon, who started the Internationalist Bookstore
When PSH opened in 2022 (with notably barer walls), a previous volunteer of the Internationalist Bookstore asked if they could make a donation; they were sitting on dozens of boxes of books that had been sitting in their home since the bookstore closed a few years prior. The PSH team gladly accepted the books, and the history they brought with them.
Since that first donation, PSH’s book collection has been in a steady ebb and flow, with a free form check in and check out policy that prioritizes access to radical pedagogy and philosophies over meticulous tracking systems. Visitors to the space grab and borrow the books that call to them. They leave the ones that they hope will call to others. Some of the book donations are political classics, with copyright dates that predate the 20th century. Some books are fresh from the printer, brought in by activist-scholar-writers who host a book talk or group reading at PSH and choose to donate one or two copies of their work to the space.
PSH looks forward to securing a copy of this work from the upcoming book talk hosted by Durham Assoc. Of Educators for “Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When it’s Hard” by Ellen Friedman
In this way, PSH serves as a collective resource, where community members can access the knowledge contained within the hundreds of thousands of pages of text that exist throughout the building. An invisible network of connection is formed through one of the oldest mediums. Each book tells a story about the time and place from which they were formed. And PSH community members find themselves intertwined with that story anytime they take a book home.
You can learn more about The Internationalist bookstore at this archived article here.
If you want to support the community’s access to People’s Solidarity Hub and its book collection, consider becoming a sustainer or making a donation here!
