Founded by Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, Cafe Resistance on Soutel Drive is a bookstore, coffee shop and community hub that highlights African American authors and banned books. Here’s the story behind this Northwest Jacksonville hotspot.
For over a year, Cafe Resistance Bookstore & Coffee Shop has been an invigorating force of resistance in Northwest Jacksonville. Nixon opened the cafe in 2024 to provide a safe place for children and teens to fall in love with reading while improving literacy rates in the area. This coincided with the height of the state’s offensive against books covering the history of race and racism.
As a result, some may know Cafe Resistance for platforming banned books and other African American literature, but a year later, the space has become so much more. Cafe Resistance stands as a third space, providing services and programming that directly address the health, education and economic equality failures that have plagued the Northside. The space is best described in Nixon’s own words:…