His brother, Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, acted as an advisor for U.S. President Harry S. Truman and helped to build a 500+ unit housing development for the poor.

[5] While Izzy Young's Folk Center further south in Greenwich Village became a hang-out during the folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including the rising Bob Dylan,[6][7] the Memorial Bookstore up in Harlem was a rare place for black people and scholars and anyone interested in literature by, or about, African Americans, Africans, Caribbeans and South Americans.

In the early 1960s folk and popular music, and the civil rights movement, were inter-related, overlapping and "inspiring the growth and creativity of each other" as historians Izzerman and Kazin write[8] Michaux's bookstore had over 200,000 texts and was the nation's largest on its subject.

[3] Harlem had been the headquarters of Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League of the world—the largest mass black movement of the times.

[10] When it came to religion, Michaux had a sign in the store reading "Christ is Black", but he also departed from his brother Lightfoot Solomon's affiliations with Christianity, saying: "The only lord I know, is the landlord.