At Denny Moe’s Barbershop on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, owner Denny Mitchell has removed all video games from his shop and replaced them with a bookshelf of children’s books.
It’s one of dozens of Black-owned barbershops participating in Barbershop Books, a nationwide program that first launched in Central Harlem to close a staggering achievement gap: More than 80 percent of Black fourth-grade boys are not proficient at reading, according to a National Assessment for Educational Progress report.
