First Black-Owned Children's Bookstore Reopens in Raleigh

The first Black-owned children’s bookstore, Liberation Station, has reopened in Raleigh, North Carolina Monday, Dec. 29, after online threats forced it to close earlier this year.

The bookstore has relocated to 430 Hill Street in Southeast Raleigh. The owner, Victoria Scott-Miller, a former educator, said that her two young boys were the motivation behind her creating Liberation Station. Each book in the bookstore is written by a Black author amd read by the owners and their children before being put on the shelves.

“It feels like a homecoming,” Scott-Miller said to the Raleigh News & Observer. “It just feels right. This is a time of so much polarization in this country. We needed a space.”

The bookstore first opened on Fayetteville Street in 2023. Soon after opening, Scott-Miller reported she received multiple hate messages and death threats on their social media page and phone calls at the bookstore. She then decided to close the store in April.

She told the News & Observer that the new store on Hill Street feels safer “because of the community that surrounds it and the history that makes residents proud.” The new location is also near Historically Black College and University, Saint Augustine.

The bookstore also received over $60,000 from a GoFundMe campaign after the Liberation Station’s story went viral on TikTok. The campaign raised nearly half the money in 24 hours.

The grand reopening is expected to take place on Monday. Scott-Miller said she expects nearly 2,000 people for the reopening.

First Black-Owned Children’s Bookstore Reopens in Raleigh was originally published on foxync.com