Una Mulzac: 80 years of life, more than half as a dissident

NEW YORK — Since 1967, Una Mulzac has owned and managed the Liberation Bookstore, a small business in the heart of Harlem where she also lives. Small, indeed, but nevertheless a profitable business that allows her to make a life without husband and children and to sustain her relatives.

She launched the bookstore after she returned from Guyana, in northeast South America, where she owned a similar business that she nearly lost after a raid by U.S. forces fearing a communist contagion in the country. That bookstore was named after the People’s Progressive Party, which she said was “fighting for the emancipation of the Guyanese people.”

At the same time, Mulzac could not hide her love for Africa. The name of her Harlem bookstore was obvious proof of that. “I chose Liberation Bookstore to honor the Portuguese colonies struggling for liberation.” Even if she had difficulty recalling all of those old Portuguese colonies during an interview at the store, she remembered that Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau were three of them. So it was not surprising to learn that her favorite novel was about Africa and was authored by a Guinean: "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," by Walter Rodney. The book “is about Europe and Africa and shows how European countries have impoverished Africa. It is a book to be read by all,” Mulzac said.

The Liberation Bookstore was obviously not a business for the sake of business. It was for Mulzac a path towards the democratization of knowledge in a city and a nation where African Americans and other minorities struggled for life. She purposefully chose the motto for the bookstore: “If you don’t know, learn; if you know, teach.”

She has won more than 15 awards for her commitment. Some of them were displayed on the wall of the bookstore. They were awarded by associations for local development such as the Local Harlem Development Corporation, by civil rights organizations such as the New Afrikan People’s Organization and by cultural associations including the Marcus Garvey Centennial International and the Black History Committee. For these groups and others, Uma Mulzac, as it was stated on one diploma, was an exceptional woman who devoted her “life for the liberation and education of African People.”

Inspired by her father

Her father was Hugh T. Mulzac. He was the first African American Merchant Marine officer to command an integrated crew out of the United States. He was a brave soldier and also a radical trade unionist who was blacklisted after refusing to cooperate with the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950. Una Mulzac said she was the only one among her 4 sisters and 1 brother to accompany her father to trade union meetings.

She inherited the trade unionist spirit and the military boldness of her father. She was proud of that when she said, emphatically, “My father was a great activist and he trained me for the civil rights struggle. He is my main source of inspiration.”

In 1963 she took part in a march on Washington as a representative of the Houston, Texas, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Forty years later, on February 15, 2003, she was among a half-million marchers who attended a rally on slavery reparations that took place in front of the United Nations building in New York. Despite her age, she said she would attend another rally for the same purpose at the same place on September 13.

If her father was her inspiration, Winnie Madikizela was her idol. “Winnie is a heroine. I will always love her,” she said, “in spite of the injustice she is facing. She has sacrificed her life to fight against apartheid and today she is paying the price in the name of national reconciliation.”

Mulzac spoke about this sad chapter in the life of Nelson Mandela’s former wife with the anger of someone who is aware of the dreadfulness of the fight against racial segregation.

At the Liberation Bookstore there were pictures of Winnie and other civil rights fighters including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, whom Mulzac considered to be the most charismatic African American leader. Coincidently, her bookstore is located on Malcolm X Boulevard. Those who visited the bookstore in early September did not leave without a leaflet or a note calling their attention to current issues or inviting them to attend a relevant public manifestation.

In spite of this activism, Una Mulzac was not an optimistic woman. Her main concern was the fact that African Americans were not well represented when important decisions are taken. That was yet another struggle.