Bad Day at the Book Shop

Well, this is never a good look for a book shop. Or any business. What looks like a corpse being wheeled out of Mary's Book Shop in Milwaukee in this 1966 press photo, is a book salesman who survived a gunshot wound inside the store. I suppose his face is covered for privacy. So what happened?


Mary's Book Shop, a benign name that belied a business known for its inventory of left-wing political texts, and rare publications, was a gathering space for radicals, activists, and intellectuals in the Milwaukee. That earned them the label of major communist bookstore by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

In November 1966, a troubled 17-year-old walked into Mary's Bookshop at 318 W. Juneau Avenue in Milwaukee, hell-bent on killing a communist (as he would later tell police). Fred Blair was in his sights, but a traveling book salesman, Ralph Sacks, happened to be in the shop that day and jumped into action to disarm the assailant. He got shot for his efforts before Blair could subdue the kid with a baseball bat he kept behind the counter. All survived and Ralph Sacks was wheeled off to the hospital while the young gunman was wheeled off to jail and later a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

Fred and Mary Blair's shop also survived despite their political stances. But the shop could not survive urban renewal and construction projects that displaced much of their neighborhood customer base. They closed in the summer of 1969. 



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