Inside Choctaw Books

“My aunt, Sadie Thorn, had an antique store in Vicksburg right on the river that drew riverboat tourists,” explains Fred C. Smith, B.A. 1975, owner and operator of Choctaw Books. “In the late 1970s, my father and I decided to put some Southern books over there to test the waters before opening a bookshop in Jackson. And they sold and sold and sold.”

In 1982, after Mrs. Thorn had to close her store for health reasons, the Smiths opened shop in Ridgeland with her stock of antiques and jewelry and their books. They struggled at the site for two years and then moved their books-only shop to Manship and Northwest streets in Jackson, where business soon doubled.

“When we moved downtown, we immediately attracted working people looking for a place where they could relax for a while. Some have become regular book buyers, others are mostly lunch-time browsers,” Smith says. “Even with the new chain bookstores in town, our downtown customers have remained a constant.”

In addition to steady weekday customers and Saturday shoppers, book dealers drive over from the Carolinas or from New Orleans, and collectors call in orders from Santa Fe and New York City, from England and Japan.

A diverse clientele requires a diverse selection of books. From the beginning, Choctaw Books focused on Southern history and literature, with a special emphasis on Civil War and Mississippi-related books, and it has remained committed to these fields.

Choctaw’s tall wooden shelves are divided into helpful categories: history by state and war, for example, and broad sections such as travel, mystery, theology, and gardening. Fiction is more or less alphabetical by author, with an excellent selection.

A separate room of modern first editions, advanced readers’ copies, and uncorrected proofs is where the store truly distinguishes itself. Though it offers thousands of titles below $10 in other areas, in the collector’s room a single title can cost $1,000, and for many signed, limited edition works, such a price is a bargain.

“This is the type of shop I wouldn’t mind being stranded in for an extended period of time,” David and Diane Siegel write in The Used Book Lover’s Guide to the Central States.

Choctaw Books has established a national reputation as a specialist in books on the South. And with 70,000 volumes, it is the largest used hardback store in the state.

“I think people have a tendency to forget the value of a used bookstore to a community. Fred Smith is a great resource because of the breadth of his knowledge,” says John Evans, owner of Jack- son’s Lemuria Books. “People find old books in their grandmother’s attic, and they go to Fred to assess their value. He’s a conduit to lost information, to nostalgia, to the rich history of this state.”

With prosperity and growing recognition came a need for more space, so in 1990 Choctaw moved to its current and presumably permanent site at 926 North Street.

“I’m never moving again. Never! I’m entrenched!” says a jovial Fred Smith, his peppered beard dancing on his cheeks. “When we moved to North Street, I was much younger – and it nearly killed me then!”

So instead of moving again, Smith has turned to the aisles for space, with a stack of books here and there, order among chaos.

The best way to approach the store is to find a row empty of people and start reading the spines left to right, top to bottom. You are guaranteed to find a book you never heard of, never thought about, can’t believe was published, and can’t live without.