It’s no secret that Baltimore is to thank for many of the inventions that have influenced the modern world. Here, we round up four of the coolest creations that the city takes credit for—and some of the local businesses keeping the tradition alive today.

LINOTYPE

In 1884, German-born inventor and Baltimorean Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the linotype, a machine that quickly set complete lines of type and revolutionized printing forever. In the first decade of its use, American news- paper readership shot from 3.6 million to more than 33 million.

→ BRICKHOUSE BOOKS
Though we’re well past the days of the linotype, Maryland’s oldest continuously operating small press (since 1970) embraces modern technology to print batches of poetry, fiction, drama, and artistic nonfiction from a wide range of voices.

→ BLACK CLASSIC PRESS
In 1978, W. Paul Coates started a press company in his basement, and it remains as one of the oldest independently owned black publishers in the United States. The legacy printer publishes and reissues works from African-American thinkers such as Walter Mosley and W.E.B. Du Bois.

BIKES

Baltimore became the birthplace of the American bicycle in 1818, when a local piano maker named James Stewart created his own take on the European velocipede. Bicycles, which originally had pedals on the front wheel, have evolved from the velocipede to the high-wheel bikes of the 19th century to the modern version seen on city streets today.

→ BALTIMORE BICYCLE WORKS
This dedicated worker-owned bicycle shop in Station North offers attentive customer service, repairs, and a selection of reliable bikes and parts, hop- ing to bring the joy of biking back to its birthplace.

→ JOE’S BIKE SHOP
Joe Traill, owner of Joe’s Bike Shop, fell in love with bikes at a young age and worked as both a bike messenger and a repairman before becoming the owner of one of Baltimore’s favorite bike repair shops.

RYE WHISKEY

In the early 19th century, Baltimore earned national recognition for the inven- tion and distillation of this tasty liquor. The rye whiskey industry boomed until Prohibition brought production to a halt, but, luckily for local rye lovers, it has enjoyed a full-blown renaissance in the Old Line State thanks to area distilleries.

→ SAGAMORE SPIRIT
In 2017, Sagamore Spirit, co-founded by Under Armour mogul Kevin Plank, helped resurrect Maryland’s rye whiskey industry with its signature sipper proofed with limestone water from an area horse farm. The distillery’s headquarters in Port Covington hosts tours, workshops, and events dedicated to teaching visitors about the local history of the spirit as well as the practice of whiskey production.

→ BALTIMORE SPIRITS CO.
Housed in Medfield’s Union Collective and founded by three Baltimore natives in 2015, the Baltimore Spirits Company uses modern distillation techniques to create their own version of the old-world spirit. While the popular spot also distills liquors such as gin and brandy, the Epoch Rye has remained its calling card.

ICE CREAM FACTORY

In 1851, Baltimore milk dealer Jacob Fussell took over a dairy business that sold a frozen blend of milk, eggs, and sugar, and not long after, he opened the nation’s first ice cream factory. Fussell’s mass production of the sweet treat made making ice cream affordable and turned it into the phenomenon the world knows and loves.

→ THE CHARMERY
Since the Charmery opened its flagship store in Hampden in 2013, this beloved creamery has expanded to two addition- al locations and has its own factory in Union Collective. Known for out-of-the box flavors such as Old Bay Caramel and Cheese and Crackers, this fan-favorite brand is definitely keeping Baltimore’s ice cream legacy alive.

→ TAHARKA BROTHERS ICE CREAM

This socially conscious ice cream business uses its delicious flavors, now served out of Broadway Market, as well as tons of local restaurants and grocery stores, as a vehicle to bring people together to discuss social change in the city and beyond.

Twenty-some years ago, you could find a young Amanda McCormick shut inside a room somewhere, piecing together books by hand, pasting images together, stapling, taping, creating.

Fast-forward to 2019, and not much has changed. As a professor of book arts at the University of Baltimore, McCormick has made publishing books—and teaching others how to publish books—her life’s work. She’s also the founder of Ink Press Productions, which publishes limited-edition, handmade books and hosts events.

“This is what I was meant to do—this is everything,” McCormick says, sitting at a table in the Book Arts Studio at UB. Shelves of intricate handmade books line the walls alongside an old letterpress printer. “Books started as a vessel for the Age of Enlightenment, to give voice to people who don’t always get a voice,” she says. “And I think that books continue to do that. I think that’s the tradition of publishing, and that’s how it exists for us, too. It can be a really empowering art form.”

Ink Press’ mission is to blur the lines between writing, visual, and performance art. They reimagine the typical book launch, for instance, by creating multi-sensory events that incorporate themes and tones of the book being released—like a carnival-themed party at the Windup Space for She Named Him Michael, the true story of a chicken that got its head cut off, lived for another 18 months, and was sold to a freak show—instead of just having an author stand in front of a room reading book excerpts.

Ink Press is one of several small presses in the city, and more crop up every year, coinciding with a national trend. In Baltimore, these independent publishers, each with its own mission and niche, run the gamut from tiny, one-person operations to the oldest small press in Maryland, which has published books for nearly 50 years.

While small presses have been on the rise—and large presses like JHU Press hold steady—the industry has largely been monopolized by “the big five”—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. With more and more writers and fewer and fewer traditional publishing houses, many writers, new and established alike, are turning to smaller presses, which offer more cachet than self-publishing. Plus, most authors still want a physical copy of their book, rather than a digital version—and readers do, too.

Despite predictions that the e-book was going to kill the paperback, studies indicate the contrary. While periodicals have been on the decline, print books are making a comeback, with sales rising steadily in recent years. It turns out, people still relish holding a good book in their hands. There’s the romantic notion of lounging on a beach, novel in tow. There’s also the practicality of it—you can’t dog-ear, highlight, or scribble notes in an e-book, or store it on a shelf to start your own collection, or gift it to someone else. Plus, that book smell. The reasons are as many and varied as the presses that are publishing them.

“We thought students were reading on Kindles . . . but they actually adore books.”

You might wonder why someone like Dorothy Van Soest chose to work with Loyola University’s student-run Apprentice House Press. The Seattle-based author had published several academic books through traditional publishers but reached out to Apprentice House after she’d written her first novel. The small press is the first in the country to be run by college students, though other schools have since created similar programs.

“It was such a good match,” Van Soest says. “I was way more comfortable thinking about working with students than with a big publishing company, where you’re lucky to get a phone call, and you lose say over things such as the cover design. With Apprentice House, I could still be involved.”

She has since published three novels with the press, working with a different batch of students each time, as well as director Kevin Atticks, the linchpin who keeps the program running smoothly.

“We have so many students interested in writing and books, which is fascinating to us as faculty, because we thought books were going away,” Atticks says. “We thought students were reading on Kindles and iPads, but it turns out, they actually adore books.”

About a third of their authors are local. On the one-year anniversary of the Capital Gazette shooting, June 28, they released Love Punch & Other Collected Columns by Rob Hiaasen.

The program was originally just one course that educated students about the book publishing process, but advances in printing technology made it feasible to put together an entire book in one semester. They began in 2002 and now publish 15-18 books each year, all of which are typically released in the fall, as a new batch of manuscripts comes in for another group of students.

The curriculum is structured into three divisions: acquisitions, design, and marketing. While the students don’t engage in formal marketing, they do work with the authors to develop marketing plans.

“They really did their research and had great marketing ideas,” Van Soest recalls. “One student created a mockup interview that I could submit to a radio station. That really got me thinking in a whole new way.”

Two longstanding staples in the Baltimore literary scene are BrickHouse Books and Black Classic Press.

Founded in 1970, BrickHouse is Maryland’s oldest continuously operating small press.

“[BrickHouse founder] Michael Egan and I both thought a press dedicated to getting a person’s first book out was a good idea—because we were both 29 years old at the time and struggling to get our first books out,” says Clarinda Harriss, who has been the editor of BrickHouse since 1973. “In those days, self-publishing was a big no-no, career-wise.”

Some might say she was destined for the role: her father, R.P. Harriss, was an editor of The Evening Sun and good friends with H.L. Mencken. She works from home in her father’s former office, while a team of volunteer editors, a proofreader, and a designer work offsite to publish books each year across all genres, limiting press runs to under 1,200.

Black Classic Press, an African-American book publishing company, began shortly after BrickHouse, in 1978, making it one of the oldest black indie presses in the country. Founding director W. Paul Coates began the company as a means to publish—and also re-publish and bring back into circulation—books by and about African Americans and the black diaspora. It has also grown over the decades to become a printing service for other publishers and various companies and nonprofits, with five digital presses operating onsite at its offices in Halethorpe.

“We’re not looking for a typical murder mystery . . . we want to push the bounds of what is literary.”

A smaller operation, CityLit Press has garnered attention, too. It began in 2010 as an offshoot of CityLit Project, whose mission is to elevate the literary arts scene in the Baltimore region through readings, an annual festival, and, of course, books. Founder Gregg Wilhelm had worked with independent publishers since 1992 and saw a small publishing operation as another way to support writers. CityLit typically publishes books by area authors, including occasional Baltimore contributor Rafael Alvarez, or on subject matter that ties into the region.

Wilhelm essentially runs the press on his own—soliciting manuscripts, working with writers, and even designing the layout and covers.

Some Baltimore presses serve a very precise niche. Press Press, for example, is an interdisciplinary publishing initiative known for its commitment to bringing forth the stories and experiences of underrepresented voices and narratives. Collective members operate a storefront studio and library in Baltimore, which serves as a gathering place to share ideas, a space for immigrant- and refugee-only workshops for youth, an open studio that’s accessible to the public, and a venue for events that coincide with publishing projects. Press Press came onto the scene in 2014 and recently expanded to operate in Los Angeles as well, when founder Kimi Hanauer relocated there. Its massive 2018 release, Sentiments: Expressions of Cultural Passage, was praised widely and garnered national attention.

Gwen Van Velsor aims to serve underrepresented voices as well but focuses on women who are local to the Baltimore area. While she was living in Colorado, she started a writing group at Yellow Arrow Coffee, which she says mostly turned into a group therapy session where those sitting around a table would commiserate about how hard it is to get published. After moving to Baltimore in 2015, Van Velsor created Yellow Arrow Publishing when she wanted to publish her own book.

“At the end of the day, the publishing process was really tough. I wished I’d had more of a support system,” says Van Velsor. “I just wanted to put this book out into the world and move on with my life!”

What started as a way to rectify her own publishing woes soon became a way to support other writers, particularly women, whom Van Velsor says are underrepresented in the literary world. The press also puts out a biannual literary journal, showcasing creative nonfiction and poetry by women. All the printing and binding is done by hand at Van Velsor’s home in Highlandtown. Van Velsor gets a particular kick out of seeing where her authors will go.

“Being on the other side of publishing now, I love that part of it: seeing an author invited to give a reading, seeing that spark,” she says.

Baltimore’s Mason Jar Press has a noteworthy niche, too, but it’s difficult to put into words just what they publish.

“We think of it as the approachable avant-garde,” says editor-in-chief Ian Anderson.

Take, for example, Notes From My Phone*—a memoir that Michelle Junot accidentally wrote on her phone, complete with dreams she jotted down, notes about her day, prayers, and grocery lists.

“We’re not looking for your typical murder mystery,” Anderson says. “I like those stories—I write those stories—but we want to push the bounds of what is literary.”

Like Ink Press Productions, some small presses put a strong focus on the aesthetics and the handcrafted quality of their products. They believe in following the credo of “form follows function.”

“E-books are great . . . but there’s no relationship with the book there. There’s no personality.”

Akinoga, Mychael Zulauf’s one-person operation, is such a press. After graduating from UB’s MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program, Zulauf wanted to stay connected with the community they’d met there. Zulauf started the press, as well as a podcast, as a means to keep working with writers.

Akinoga typically releases one book a year, each designed very intentionally—hand-bound, eye-catching—and printed in small runs, usually of 60. “E-books are great if you wanna have access to a ton of books, but there’s no relationship with the book there. There’s no personality,” Zulauf says. “I tend to fold and tear all my covers, as opposed to cutting them, and they just seem much more intimate and inviting. They want to be picked up. If you’re gonna take the time to do a physical book, I think you really need to lean into the physicality of it and ask, is it gonna have a deckle edge? Is it gonna be glossy or matte? All of those questions.” (You won’t find an ISBN or a blurb on the back of any of their books either.)

Container takes it a step further. Founded and run by Jenni B. Baker and Douglas Luman, this unorthodox press transforms the written word into art objects. Although they just relocated from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, the press is credited as having a huge impact on the local indie press scene with its out-of-the-box projects. Recent releases have included Saw Palmettos, a set of short poems from transgender poet Charles Theonia, which was presented as a series of 21 tincture bottles housed in a wooden stand and documenting Theonia’s experience beginning hormone replacement therapy and putting saw palmetto oil on their scalp to ward off hair loss. Another poetry collection was presented as a series of origami gemstones. Looks Books is a subscription series where subscribers receive a View-Master and five “books” presented on View-Master reels. The most recent project is Colette LaBouff’s Holdings, an accordion book comprised of individual library cards whose prose and photography form a narrative set inside a library.

Perhaps Joseph Young takes the idea of “form follows function” the furthest of all. In 2017, MicroFiction RowHouse was born when he transformed his entire Hampden home into a life-sized storybook. He’d dabbled in making photo transfers of his stories in galleries but wanted to create something on a larger scale. He checked in with his own landlord, Donna Sellinger, who happened to be part of the Wham City arts collective and gave him the okay to transform his rowhome. Microfiction is strewn throughout—photocopy-transferred in large, block letters on its walls, beds, even on the front porch—telling the story of the fictional family who lives there.

He doesn’t operate a small press, per se, but recently published his book Always Never Speaking under the RowHouse imprint. In May, he held his book launch at the house, one of several literary events he has held there, but rather than read passages to a crowd, he organized what he titled “300 Seconds: Live Magazine,” allowing writers to take the microphone for no longer than 300 seconds to share stories.

Is this the future of literature?

If one thing is certain, it’s that books will survive—in forms both old and new—and it’s small presses that will make them accessible to writers and readers alike.

Paul Coates has lived a rich life, but enter his name in a Google search and not much comes up. Sure, you’ll find that he’s the father of Ta-Nehisi Coates, the famed writer and intellectual, who has occasionally examined their father-son bond in his writings. But those accounts belong to the son, not the father. Dig a little deeper and you’ll probably find mention of Coates’ time as leader of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s and his connections to several controversial figures. But again, very little of the information is firsthand. 

Persevere further and you might discover that Coates is the founder and director of Black Classic Press and BCP Digital Printing, one of the nation’s leading publishers and distributors of literature by and about members of the black diaspora. The press is celebrating its 40th year in 2018, and, during those decades, it has resurrected and distributed texts by seminal African-American scholars such as W.E.B. DuBois, J.A. Rogers, and Carter G. Woodson; published fiction by contemporary writers such as Walter Mosley; and championed little-known histories of ancient African societies. 

But even though one of its goals is to rescue forgotten or overlooked black figures from obscurity, you’ll find nary a biographical sentence about Coates on the business’ website. Obscurity may not be okay for others, but it suits Coates just fine. 

“I came from on the corners talking,” Coates explains. “One of the things that I fell into early on is I wouldn’t spend a lot of time talking. ‘They will know you by your work.’ It’s one of them things. I don’t like to talk unless there’s something to say.”

Sitting in his office, which is located in a nondescript office park in Arbutus, Coates cuts a thoughtful, professorial figure. The rhythmic hum of printers resounds through the walls as he parleys and reflects on a life that has had few constants, save literature.

“The largest preoccupation with my time is reading,” he acknowledges. “I get immense pleasure. It’s comparable to sex. Almost.”

Coates was born in 1947 in West Philadelphia to Douglas Cryor and Edna Coates. Cryor was a violent alcoholic who fathered at least 14 children with several women, including three sisters. As a result, Coates grew up with aunts who also doubled as stepmothers. His neighborhood was equally chaotic. His refuge was the nearest library, where the young bookworm plowed through comics, crime novels, and history titles. At the earliest opportunity, he quit high school and joined the Army.

“The service gave an option to see the world,” he says. “It [also] had to do with the military feeling safer than being on the street. You talkin’ about friends getting shot down.”

His time in the Army was uneven at best. He faced nonstop harassment and racism. One incident, a run-in with a fellow soldier, changed his life forever.

“I’d had a conflict with a Native American guy who folks used to call Chief. One day Chief . . .  calls me nigga . . . so we get to rollin’,” he says. “We got separated, [and] I’m really upset. I went into [a] room, where I paced. I saw this book that said Black Boy. I figure, somebody’s f—–’ with me. I ended up . . . going back to my room and reading it.”

Black Boy by Richard Wright is a memoir detailing the author’s early life in the Jim Crow South. For the first time, Coates had found a book that spoke to his experience as a black man in America. It was an awakening.

“It occurred to me that this was a whole genre,” he says, gesturing as if holding a book.

From there, he discovered the works of black writers such as Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, and James Baldwin.

In 1965, Coates was sent to Vietnam, where he worked as a military policeman in a K-9 unit. He served 18 months, and was discharged in 1967. While at war, he corresponded with his sergeant’s niece, a Baltimore woman. Soon after his return from Southeast Asia, he relocated to Charm City and married her. By 1968, Coates was living in Cherry Hill with a wife and child, and he had procured a job as a baggage handler at what was then Friendship International Airport.

Then, as now, the city was a hotbed of racial strife and poverty with trust in law enforcement at a low ebb, particularly in black communities. Coates, newly socially aware, sought to do his part for Baltimore. He began volunteering in a community breakfast program run by the Black Panthers, the legendary black nationalist and socialist organization that was created in 1966 to witness interactions between the police and citizens and address economic and social inequality. Though he was not then a member, Coates shared many of the group’s ideals.

“I admired what they stood for. I wanted to be identified with that,” he says.

His affiliation with the Panthers—however initially tenuous—was not without risk. Then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had declared the Black Panther Party a national threat and directed undercover agents to infiltrate its chapters. This adversarial dynamic led to the shooting deaths of several Panthers and law enforcement officers across the country. Gradually, pressures mounted on the Panthers, internal divisions grew, and some party members turned on each other, resulting in more homicides. The party dissolved in 1982.

In 1970, Coates, still not yet a member, found himself caught in the middle. He was helping several Panthers load rifles into his car—a legal act then and now—when police swarmed and arrested everyone. Tensions had been running high in the city because a police officer had just been murdered and three local Panthers were charged—spuriously, some said—with the crime. Coates suspects the raid was an attempt by law enforcement to intimidate the Panthers and drain their financial resources.

“There was no basis for them to arrest us,” Coates says, noting that the guns were for self-protection and unloaded. “There was nothing wrong with transporting guns. We were concerned that the police were going to come and kill us. We did not want to die like that.”

About a week later, Coates and the others were released on bail. Shortly thereafter, John Clark, the leader of the Baltimore chapter, was taken by a bail bondsman to California, where he faced outstanding charges. Clark’s absence left a power vacuum in Baltimore, giving rise to internal disputes. Coates reported the group’s status at regional Panther headquarters in New York.

“They asked me who was left, and I told them, ‘Nobody.’ They said, ‘Nobody but you.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m not a Panther.’ And the brother looked at me and said, ‘You a m—-f—–’ Panther now!’ I didn’t want to do it. I had a family. The last thing I wanted to do was be in charge of the Black Panther Party.’”

Reluctantly, he became defense captain of the Baltimore Black Panthers, managing all activities in Maryland.

“We started a free clothing program [and] free food programs. We’d help people with their rent. Whatever the pain was . . . we would try to intercede,” Coates remembers.

He also ensured that the Panthers, who preached a philosophy of armed self-defense, maintained a physical presence wherever blacks felt threatened.

“I never will forget; a woman from Dundalk was afraid to go to the store because she was harassed by white folks,” he says. “We sent folks down there to make sure she didn’t get f—-d with.”

Coates emphasizes that, contrary to popular misconception, the Panthers were not anti-white. In his view, capitalism was the great evil. It brought about racism, which resulted in oppression.

“The last thing I wanted to do was be in charge of the Black Panther Party.” 

“The people who benefit the most from manipulating those factors are the people who control the lines of capital. [They] bring the most pressure to bear on blacks, such as myself, and even whites,” he says.

In the winter of 1971, as legal troubles put pressure on imprisoned Black Panther members, Coates traveled to the Panthers’ Oakland headquarters for help. It would be a momentous trip.

“I’d gone to California to get aid for the guys who were in jail,” he says. He pressed to speak to the leadership, but to no avail. Disillusioned, he vowed to leave the group.

“When I came back, I was no longer with the party,” he says. “[But] the people that were in jail in Baltimore, including Eddie Conway, I still felt responsible for.”

Marshall “Eddie” Conway was one of three Baltimore Panthers convicted in 1971 for killing Baltimore police officer Donald Sager. The case against Conway, who has always maintained his innocence, rested largely on police testimony and circumstantial evidence. Conway was released in 2014 after an appellate court ruled his jury had been given faulty instructions. He and Coates remain close.

“I’ve had, over my 44 years [in prison], people come and go. I could always, no matter what, depend on Paul,” Conway says, speaking from the offices of The Real News Network, where he is a producer and host. “That was one of the things that kept me stable because, obviously, in the middle of prison there’s so much instability . . . Without his support when I got out, my life would have been a lot different than it is now. We’re brothers.”

It’s mid-October and Coates strides through his printing factory, books stacked high on shelves, ready to be boxed and shipped. The efficiency and solidity of the operation belie its humble beginnings, which can be traced back to an initiative Coates developed with other activists in 1972 called the George Jackson Prison Movement. The idea was to bring progressive and Afrocentric literature to inmates in an effort, as Coates says, to “retrieve the souls and minds of the incarcerated.” The program was run out of a bookstore Coates owned first on Pennsylvania Avenue and later on North Avenue called The Black Book. By 1978, the store had closed and the program had morphed into Black Classic Press. BCP Digital Printing followed in 1995.

Coates says Black Classic Press’ largest milestone came in 1997, when Walter Mosley, a black novelist known for crime writing (including the award-winning Devil in a Blue Dress), granted it the domestic and foreign rights to his latest novel, Gone Fishing.  

“He wanted to do it with an independent black publisher,” Coates explains. “We’re very good friends.”

Though Coates knows he has made an important cultural contribution, he has never made a fortune. Most of the company’s revenue—some 90 percent, Coates estimates—comes from the digital printing side, which churns out fliers, posters, brochures, and the like for clients ranging from libraries to online customers.  

“We have to print a lot of stuff . . . so Black Classic Press can be the voice that it is,” Coates notes. “But brother, you’ll know us through our actions—and that’s the way it is.”

Coates’ acceptance of this stems from the fact that, more than 40 years after leaving the Panthers, he holds economic views similar to those he held as a revolutionary.

“I think of myself as a communalist . . . One of the first things we did was organize ourselves as a union. I hold that the principles of unionism are closer to the fair view that I have of community,” he explains.

For Coates, family is at the center of community. He used the G.I. Bill—which paid veterans to attend college—for income while working toward a bachelor’s degree from Homestead-Montebello Center of Antioch University, later to become Sojourner–Douglass College. He then earned a master’s degree in library science from Atlanta University that he would put to use working in Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, where he would comb the stacks for out-of-print black literature. Another perk of this position was that his children received reduced tuition. Coates is the biological father of seven children by four different women. Two were wives and two were women in the Panthers. He is currently married and has two additional adult children through this marriage, bringing his total brood to nine.

“My family is the family I created,” he says simply.

All of his children—Kelly, Jonathan, Malik, Menelik, Ta-Nehisi, Darius, Jared, and Damani and Kristance, who both work at Baltimore Classic Press—have earned their father’s pride. Ta-Nehisi, of course, is the most widely known, writing for The Atlantic and receiving—among a host of other honors—a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2015. When asked about Ta-Nehisi’s success, Coates answers with cautious approval.

“As long as he’s not doing it to convince the world he’s cool. He comes from a tradition, and he is very connected spiritually to that tradition. That’s what gives him the power that he has. It ain’t that I raised him,” he says.

That said, Coates does think he made at least one important paternal contribution.

“I think I’ve opened up a path that all of my children have an awareness and a curiosity. I have absolutely accomplished that . . . with the help of their mothers, their grandparents, [and] the help of the community that helped to raise them,” he says.

Leading the way out of the factory, Coates points to the framed art bedecking the office walls and hallways. The array includes a portrait of Ta-Nehisi, African-themed paintings, and other works created by some of his 10 grandchildren.

“I’m connected to a tradition of black people speaking for themselves,” he says. “That’s what gets me up in the morning! I’m clear on why I do this. I’m real clear what I’m responsible for. That’s what Black Classic Press is, brother.”

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Editor’s Note: An earlier draft of this article said that Coates’ father, Douglas Cryor, fathered children with three of his sisters. He did not. He fathered children with three women who were sisters. The article has been updated to rectify the error. Baltimore regrets the error.