Inside Liberty City's only bookstore, a large mural of a bespectacled Black man dominates the space and reminds the owners of a revered friend and brother who dreamed of promoting literacy and community together under one roof.
“This is like the fruition of that dream,” said Isaiah Thomas, co-owner of Roots Bookstore & Market, in speaking about his late friend, Danny Agnew, who died two years ago in a car accident at the age of 34.
Agnew was a prominent local businessman and activist who helped lead the group Dream Defenders, a local group of social justice activists founded in 2012 following the killing of Treyvon Martin.
Agnew once described his work as “artspreneurship” — the promotion of business and culture as a means to uplift the community.
The bookstore and market opened June 19, the day the nation celebrated the day in 1865 when news of freedom reached enslaved Black people in the South — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
READ MORE: 'His mind was truly limitless': Remembering the Roots Collective's Danny Agnew
“Danny is all around,” said Cameron Agnew, Danny's brother and co-owner of the bookstore and market.
The idea of the Roots Collective was first conceived in 2017 by Danny Agnew, Isaiah Thomas, and James “Munch” Mungin.
It started then as a print media company where they’d print the"Roots" designs on shirts together. Thomas said he met the Agnew brothers, Philip and Danny, in 2016 when they were volunteering to feed the homeless during the holidays.
Philip Agnew then invited Thomas to a Dream Defenders meeting. The Agnew brothers and Thomas have been prominent members and continue to help with protests and local campaigns.
Liberty City and Black Miami
As the word “roots” implies, Cameron Agnew said the goal of owning and running a bookstore in Liberty City is to encourage local residents to grow and change their lives through literacy.
Cameron said the street where Roots Bookstore & Market stands, 15th Avenue, holds significance in Liberty City as an historically Black neighborhood. It borders Liberty Square, one of the nation's early public housing projects in the South.
“Not only does it have a cultural impact on what the street used to be,” Cameron Agnew said. “It’s also a resurgence for the community to say ‘Hey, we’re still here. We can still own within our community and we can grow our community.’”
Segregation in the early 20th century restricted Black residents to Historic Overtown. Due to overcrowding in the area, many African Americans moved to Liberty City and Liberty Square when it opened.
When the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964, many middle class African Americans — who established Liberty City as a prosperous place for Black South Floridians — looked for new opportunities in neighborhoods like Miami Lakes and Miami Gardens. The construction of I-95 through Historic Overtown drove, in large part, this migration.
Danny's dream grows
Liberty City is home to about 50,000 residents and would be Miami-Dade County's seventh-largest city if it were a municipality and not just part of Miami.
It's one of the county's poorest areas, yet it has a vibrant economy driven by mostly small businesses that are locally owned and operated, according to a 2017 University of Miami/Florida International University economic study
The study's authors found that 87% of all Liberty City businesses employ less than 20 people, and that all its businesses generated a collective $12 billion in annual sales.
Roots was first located on 7th Avenue in Liberty City as a community space called Blackhouse. It opened in 2017 but closed in 2023 when the group said they were priced out by their landlord.
Following Danny Agnew's death in 2023, the group purchased the 15th Avenue building with help from the Miami Foundation and donations from the community. The owners of the bookstore are the Roots Collective, the Village (Free)dge run by Sherina Jones, and the Agnew brothers, Philip and Cameron.
“ It was a place that we felt was needed,” Thomas said of the Roots Collective as a community space. “Where we could express ourselves and showcase what we thought Black Miami should represent and what Black Miami should look like.”
Thomas said the bookstore started with about 4,000 books and over 60% were from Danny Agnew’s father’s personal collection. Barney Agnew was known as “the book man” on the south side of Chicago, where the Agnews are from.
Many of the books on Roots' shelves have been restricted or challenged in Florida libraries and schools, including “To Kill a Mockingbird” and works by black activists George Jackson and Angela Davis.
Root's selection of books include some of Danny’s favorites, like “Blood in My Eye,” and "Soledad Brother” by George Jackson. The owners say that in a time when “educational resources are dwindling,” they want to give people the option to pick what they read for themselves.
“I guess everyone thought we were just joking,” Cameron Agnew said of the community's response to the idea of a bookstore in Liberty City. “They’re curious and they’re inquisitive on what’s going on here.”
Roots is the only bookstore in Liberty City. He said this section of Miami needs a bookstore and they are serving that need.
“ Outside of the bookstore, we're here for the community,” Cameron Agnew said.
He added that "with the bookstore you see how many people in the community are kind of pigeonholed, or they don't necessarily feel like they have enough room to grow. So they don't try to grow.”
He said customers check daily for new books, noting one customer on house arrest who comes in regularly with his ankle monitor.
“ Without an outlet, there's not too much to do around here,” Cameron Agnew said. “So it's easy to find trouble, or trouble to find you.”
“ So many people are kind of just brushed off where they've already kind of been forgotten about,” he said.
Last month, the bookstore hosted the first of many planned community events, Cameron Agnew told WLRN. This one centered around the national “Good Trouble Lives On” protests in honor of John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman and civil rights Leader. The event included picking up trash, planting flowers, chanting and a community meal.
Thomas, who was born and raised in Miami, said a bookstore delivers a very important message he wants to spread in Liberty City.
He said his goal is to teach the young Black and brown men in the community that there are paths to be successful outside of things like sports.
Thomas said his “outrageous” dream was to open a vocational school on 15th Avenue. Right now, he’s focused on expanding the bookstore.
‘When I think of books, I think of mental freedom,” he said. “Opening more bookstores is just more freedom for me and my people.” Thomas grinned at the irony that they gave out free books at one of the first events the late Danny Agnew and his peers ever hosted at the nearby Belafonte TACOLCY Center.
Today, a newly built window is in the bookstore he and Danny Agnew dreamed of. People can peer inside, see books and witness that dream rooted in a small Liberty City bookstore.
