Liberation Station is North Carolina’s first and only Black-owned children’s bookstore. It reopened last week in Raleigh in a new location after nearly a seven year long journey.
“ Liberation Station … is really a love letter from a black mother to her children that somehow overflowed into the community,” said owner Victoria Scott-Miller. “ The goal is to show that … black is vibrant, black is vast, black is glorious.”
The journey started when she was shopping for books with her two sons, Langston, now 15 who wants to be an author, and Emerson, now 9 who is autistic and was nonverbal at the time, instead finding solace in reading.
“It took us about four to five hours to find books that represented my children. This is really the first psychological wound that a child feels is to go into a space and see that their existence is optional,” said Scott-Miller.
Liberation Station first opened in 2019 in downtown Raleigh on Fayetteville Street. Scott-Miller decided to close it in April 2024 after she and her family received threats. She recounted one incident where someone called the bookstore and described “exactly what my son was wearing.”
“It made me realize very early on that black liberation will always face opposition in some way,” said Scott-Miller. “It just let me know that we were not in a position to continue doing this work. The political climate was beginning to shift rapidly.”
