Alkebu-Lan Images, a cornerstone of the North Nashville community for more than 35 years, lost its founder early last week. Yusef Harris — teacher, mentor, climber of Mount Kilimanjaro — died on Monday, Jan. 3. He was 66.
Harris opened Alkebu-Lan in 1986 while pursuing his doctorate in psychology at Vanderbilt University and teaching part time at Tennessee State University. The Jefferson Street property went up for sale, and he made a $15,000 down payment with a loan from Metro Development and Housing Agency. Since then, the shop has become a cultural mecca, selling books, art, apparel and other goods that reflect and celebrate African culture.
“Yusef knew Black people needed to see images of themselves that were uplifting,” wrote Scene contributor M. Simone Boyd in March. “He saw a path to do that through books.”
It’s hard to meet a Black person who grew up in Nashville who hasn’t felt Harris’ impact in some way. He mentored and advised hundreds of Black business owners, his son and business partner Jordan Harris told Boyd. Chakita Patterson, owner of United Street Tours, describes Harris’ impact on her business in a Facebook post. “He was one of the most knowledgeable people that I’ve ever met,” writes Patterson. “Not in an overbearing way. Not in an, ‘I’m smarter than you’ way. But in a caring way. … He gifted me with the knowledge that I needed to take my first group on tour.”
Countless poets and spoken-word artists found their voices at Harris’ open-mic nights, and the shop was a place where emerging Black authors were sure to find support. In a social media post, poet Stephanie Pruitt Gaines calls the shop “a soft landing place,” where Harris welcomed local Black authors. “He went on to mentor me about the book business and traveling for readings and speaking engagements and how to keep a book signing line lively and meaningful for the audience, booksellers, and myself,” Gaines writes. “He took me to literary events across the country and showed me how to read the room and stay true to myself and my mission.”
When Gaines bemoaned morning story times elsewhere in the city, which were difficult for working parents to attend, Harris opened his doors for an evening story time that Gaines hosted and attended with her daughter for years.
In a 2015 interview with the Scene, Harris said that his goal was to “instill and improve a person’s self-concept.”
“I recognize that to help people have more positive self-esteem and self-concept,” Harris said, “they need to read more and be conscious of their culture and heritage and history — especially African Americans.”
Harris traveled abroad throughout his life, including to Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal and Jamaica, according to his lifelong friend Donald Keene. “Over the years,” writes Keene on Facebook, “Yusef was a leader and innovator in advancing empowerment and education of Black communities in Nashville and across the USA. He was a voice and instrument of Black pride.”
“I met him when I was in 7th grade, trying to buy a leather African medallion they were wearing in all the hip-hop videos in the late ’80s,” writes Tennessee State University alum James Beard. “He challenged me to tell him what the medallion meant. Of course I didn’t know. I just wanted to wear what Grand Puba from Brand Nubian was wearing. He took time to explain to me what the red, gold, green and the red, black and green meant. This was my first foray into realizing that there was another history inside of me I knew nothing about.”
In a tweet, TSU professor and North Nashville historian Dr. Learotha Williams referenced the famed Harlem bookshop the African National Memorial Bookstore: “Yusef was our Lewis Michaux and Alkebu-Lan Images with its texts and images celebrating African life and culture became #northnashville’s House of Common Sense and Home of Proper Propaganda.”
In December 2020, Harris and his son purchased a building on Buchanan Street and expanded Alkebu-Lan. “If you are going to be brick-and-mortar, you have to be able to control your land,” Harris told the Scene’s Boyd.
“This principle,” wrote Boyd, “has allowed Alkebu-Lan to define success outside of capitalism and cultivate an environment to help other businesses grow.”
