One of Eric Vaughn’s most recent memories of his father Ed Vaughn was in August to celebrate a major milestone – his dad’s 90th birthday.
Held at Eric’s brother Randall Vaughn’s house in Atlanta, the party was filled with memorable moments: Ed modeling a new gray suit for his family members, giving a toast to “those who wish us well,” and looking up in surprise when a gift box spewed $100 bills in the air.
Ed Vaughn lived many lives throughout the years: bookstore owner, civil rights activist and politician. But on that day, Vaughn was just enjoying being a husband, father and grandfather.
“To see his response, it was just priceless,” Eric Vaughn said about the gift box. “They weren’t real $100 bills. I said, ‘Dad, you can’t take this to Walmart. They may try to put you in jail for passing fake money.’”
Ed Vaughn, known for opening the first Black-owned bookstore in Detroit and serving twice in Michigan’s House of Representatives, died Oct. 8 from pancreatic cancer, his son said. .For the last two years as his health diminished, Vaughn was living in Atlanta – first with Randall and then at an assisted living facility.
“He wasn’t in any pain, but he lost a lot of weight, and he didn’t have an appetite,” Eric Vaughn told BridgeDetroit about the state of his father in recent weeks. “We were giving him Ensure and a liquid IV, trying to get him to drink water, take his meds. Then he got to a point where he wasn’t really eating at all and we knew that…we didn’t know how much time he had, but we knew it wasn’t gonna be very long.”
A funeral service will be held Tuesday at Parks Chapel AME Church in Dothan, Alabama. In lieu of flowers, people can make a donation to Fisk University, his alma mater.
In addition to his son, Ed Vaughn is survived by his wife Wilma; children Randall, Sybil, Attallah and Sahran as well as several grandchildren, nieces, nephews and cousins. His oldest son Johnnie Forrester preceded him in death.
Vaughn opened Vaughn’s Bookstore in 1965 with his aunt Polly Rawls at 12115-12123 Dexter Avenue on Detroit’s west side. With a focus on Black history, arts and culture, he offered customers a selection of books they couldn’t find anywhere else in the city.
The bookstore was also at the center of the Civil Rights Movement, with Vaughn heavily involved in the Black nationalism and Pan-African movements. He helped organize the Detroit chapter of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) as well as a Black nationalist group called Forum ‘66 that hosted the Black Arts Convention in 1966 and 1967, according to a document from the Detroit Historic District Commission. The events usually consisted of musicians and performers as well as activists and scholars, said Detroit historian Jamon Jordan.
“They’ll generally have somebody who’s a nationally known activist like Stokely Carmichael and so, that will bring people into these forums,” he said. “And they will be talking about some of the national issues, but mainly the issues of the community. So you’re getting culture and music, but you’re also getting history, you’re getting education and you’re getting the issues.”
Last year, Vaughn’s Bookstore was one of 19 properties in Michigan added to the National Register of Historic Places for its cultural significance in Detroit. In a statement about Vaughn’s passing last week, Mayor Mike Duggan said his team is working on redeveloping the building, which has sat vacant for years.
Eric Vaughn, who owns framing shop Eric’s I’ve Been Framed on Livernois, said his dad was a forward-thinking person and if he believed he could do something, he set out to do it.
“He was a stand up guy. He didn’t like any foolishness, he was helpful. And he was just a beautiful person,” he said.
Launching a book revolution
Ed Vaughn was born July 30, 1934 in Abbeville, Alabama to parents Posie and Ivory Vaughn, the youngest of two children. The family later moved to Dothan, Alabama, where Vaughn graduated from Carver High School in 1951. For college, he went off to Nashville to attend the historically Black college Fisk University. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and government in 1955.
The following year, he moved to Detroit where he met Wilma Lathion. The two got married in 1957, but the honeymoon period was short-lived. Vaughn was drafted into the Army for the Vietnam War, serving as an artillery surveyor in Germany for two years, according to the DHDC document. In 1959, he returned to Detroit working for the United States Postal Service. The couple went on to have their four children.
The family first lived in an apartment on Boston Boulevard in the Boston-Edison neighborhood, then in a home in the historically Black neighborhood Conant Gardens. By the late 1960s, the Vaughns moved back to Boston-Edison in a house on Longfellow Street and LaSalle Boulevard, said Eric Vaughn.
The inspiration for the bookstore came after Ed Vaughn visited the National Memorial African Bookstore in New York City, according to the city document. And he was also inspired by the book “100 Years of Lynchings” by Ralph Ginzburg, Eric Vaughn said. The book featured newspaper articles from 1886 to 1960 to show the history of racial violence in the United States.
“And then the post office told him, ‘You can’t sell any more books on our lot,’” said Eric Vaughn. “After that, he left the post office and opened up the bookstore. That’s how he got started.”
Two years after Vaughn’s Bookstore opened, the shop would become a target during the 1967 Detroit rebellion. One night, the store was set on fire but failed to catch fire so the damage wasn’t extensive, according to the DHDC report. The next night, the store was broken into. Books and posters were destroyed and flooding occurred after a faucet was left running. Vaughn was not at the store that night, but neighbors told him Detroit police officers were the vandals. The police later admitted they committed the crime when Vaughn called the department.
At the time, Vaughn was being investigated by the police and FBI as part of a group of Black leaders who were accused of causing the rebellion, said the report.
The store eventually reopened and prospered due to the rising interest in Black nationalist ideas at the time. Vaughn eventually opened a second location at 10721 Mack Avenue on Detroit’s east side in 1969.
Meanwhile, the entrepreneur was also a family man, taking his children to museums, conferences and concerts, like Sly and the Family Stone at the now-demolished Ford Auditorium, said Eric Vaughn.
“He would expose us to different things,” he said. “He would take us to speaking engagements for Black speakers who would come to Detroit. Most of the time, he was one of the hosts of the conferences or sponsoring the conference. He always made sure that we were there.”
But as the book business began to decline in the mid-1970s, Ed Vaughn began dabbling in other ventures. He purchased a vacant movie theater nearby at 13125 Livernois Avenue, opening as the Langston Hughes Theatre in 1976. The theater showcased stage plays and music festivals and had a small bookshop. However, the business didn’t last long, with the theater closing in 1980.
The previous year, Vaughn closed the Dexter Avenue bookstore location and briefly ran a store on Seven Mile. Then he opened his final Vaughn’s Bookstore location at 16527 Livernois Avenue across the street from the University of Detroit Mercy.
Around this time, Vaughn was also pursuing another passion – public office.
Entering his political era
During the 1970s, Vaughn became an executive assistant for Mayor Coleman Young. However, he would end up getting fired from the job, Eric Vaughn said.
“He asked Coleman Young if he would support him if he ran for state rep,” Eric Vaughn said. “Coleman Young said no because Daisy Elliot was the current representative. She was up there in age, but Coleman had an allegiance to her because he had known her for years when he was a senator. My father decided that he wanted to run and if Coleman didn’t give him his blessings, so be it, and he let the cards fall.”
Vaughn served in the state House of Representatives from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1995 to 2000. In 1997, he unsuccessfully ran for Detroit mayor against Dennis Archer. Eric Vaughn helped his dad put up lawn signs, do door-to-door canvassing and attend various functions.
“My father couldn’t really get enough traction,” Vaughn said. “He made it through the primary and he went to the general election against Archer, but he lost big time.”
Also helping out with the campaign was former city of Detroit employee and pastor Ray Anderson. He said he was Ed Vaughn’s campaign manager for the east side of the city. The two met in the 1980s after a coworker suggested he check out Vaughn’s Bookstore.
“From passing out the flyers, going door-to-door to senior citizen homes and apartments, putting flyers under doors and being in the bookstore putting stuff together; it was just awesome,” he said. “He and I had a great relationship.”
In a statement released last week, House Speaker Joe Tate said he was sorrowful to learn about Ed Vaughn’s passing.
“The legacy of Rep. Vaughn looms large in the halls of the House, known for his fearless and tenacious fight for Detroiters in Lansing,” he said. “Rep. Vaughn’s legacy for better public education and economic development will be remembered by Detroiters for generations. The family, loved ones and friends of Rep. Vaughn have my deepest sympathy.”
Leaving a lasting impact
Ed Vaughn and his endeavors also made an impact on Jordan, the city historian. He said he first heard about the bookseller and politician when he had a radio show in the 1980s.
“He would talk about a lot of stuff. He talked about Black history, about politics, and about health,” Jordan said. “And on one of the shows, he mentioned that he had this bookstore.”
As a seventh grader at the now-closed Post Intermediate School, a curious Jordan walked to the bookstore one day after school. Vaughn told Jordan about his first location on Dexter and how the shop was destroyed by police during the rebellion. Jordan kept that memory and began coming to the store on a regular basis. Some of the books he remembered buying include an introduction to socialism and “Introduction to African Civilizations” by John G. Jackson.
While he already had an interest in history, going to the bookstore expanded Jordan’s knowledge on Detroit history, as well as African history, he said. Jordan later wrote a support letter when the original bookstore location was being considered for the National Register of Historic Places.
“He was able to give me information, give me sources that I would not have run into had it not been for him,” he said. “There’s people all over the city of Detroit who can trace their interest in history, politics, activism, faith issues and healthy eating to a visit to Vaughn’s Bookstore on Dexter. And if they’re in my era, they can trace it to the one on Livernois.”
Jordan remained a customer at Vaughn’s Bookstore until the business closed in the late 1990s. Eric Vaughn eventually bought the building from his father for Eric’s I’ve Been Framed, where it still sits today.
After serving his second term in the state House of Representatives, Ed Vaughn moved back to Dothan, Alabama. He remained active throughout the 2000s and 2010s, joining the Dothan/Wiregrass NAACP branch and eventually serving as its vice-president of the branch, according to the DHDC report. From 2005 to 2009, Ed Vaughn served as the president of the NAACP Alabama State Conference. Then he became involved in local government in Dothan.
Eric Vaughn said his dad was a large influence on him and inspired him to pursue a career in local government and later, opening his own business.
“You just don’t know who you’re going to touch, what’s going to spark you, but he did that for a lot of people,” he said. “I look at him, he’s my dad. I know he did stuff, but to hear the stories and to see people and how they turned out…it’s just amazing to me that this man had an effect on so many people.”
This is a topic that deserves more attention.