Downtown Raleigh bookstore dedicated to Black children, authors, to close after threats
Liberation Station Bookstore, North Carolina’s first Black-owned children’s bookstore, is leaving downtown Raleigh after threats against the family-owned business, its owner says.
The bookstore, on the second floor of 208 Fayetteville St., is closing April 13, less than a year after it opened.
Liberation Station received a mountain of press when it opened, welcoming 4,000 people during its Juneteenth opening and receiving numerous grants.
“Financially, it was wonderful,” said Victoria Scott-Miller, who owns the store with her husband, Duane Miller. “But I stand with the fact that we are in the business of children. And whether it is their emotional safety, our emotional safety, their physical safety or our physical safety, we have a responsibility to make a conscious decision about how we are able to move forward.”
The bookstore opened as a place where Black children and adults could see themselves in literature. Every book in the store is written by a Black author and read by the owners and their children before it makes it onto the floor.
Books line the wooden shelves, organized so books for the youngest readers are at eye level and books for older readers are higher up. A mural on the wall highlights the name of the bookstore and smiling, bright suns reading.
Liberation Station will continue, but they are not rushing into a new spot, Scott-Miller said.
Threats made against store
The threats included hate messages and death threats on the bookstore’s phone and on social media, including on the store’s Instagram page. They began soon after the store opened, Scott-Miller said.
One caller described the clothes her 13-year-old son was wearing as he worked in the store.
“All they said was the color of his hoodie and color of his pants,” she said. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘He has that on right now.’”
They tried to manage the threats “internally, primarily,” because they didn’t want to scare away families who saw the store as a safe place to be, Scott-Miller said.
“You can literally turn on the TV and see controversy, pain and violence,” she said. “And this is a place of refuge. Like there’s so much goodness around the work that we do that I just did not want it to be another negative experience.”
Raleigh police patrols
On Tuesday, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said she was aware of the social media posts and had reached out to the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, which contacted the Raleigh Police Department for more information about the threats.
In a Wednesday statement, the Police Department said it was aware of the posts but had not received any reports of harassment or threats at the store.
“The Raleigh Police Department encourages our community to contact us for any harassment or threats being made to them, their business or their customers,” it continued. “We do not tolerate threats or harassment and welcome the community’s help in identifying and addressing them.”
Police stepped up patrols downtown after business owners took their concerns to the City Council. Scott-Miller said that’s one reason they didn’t contact police.
“The police presence was so heavy that we did not feel that anyone would come and physically harm us,” she said.
Plus, some of the threats came from “nameless, faceless,” social media accounts.
“I don’t want to speak ill of the police,” she said. “But there is so much we often have to do to prove our discomfort and lack of safety, and we didn’t want to go through that part.”
Downtown safety concerns
The bookstore also faced some of the same safety and crime concerns its downtown neighbors have faced.
Robberies along Fayetteville Street before they opened were a key factor in the bookstore operating cashless.
Once they opened, Scott-Miller said, they spoke to their landlord, Empire Eats.
“We had a lot of people that were just kind of coming on our floor smoking weed, defacing some of the property, urinating in the hall on the stairs,” she said.
Their landlord added a security guard and camera to the building to address some of those concerns.
As they considered not renewing their lease, Scott-Miller said, they were surprised when a neighboring tenant reached out to them about the possible move. On social media, they said they had asked Empire Eats not to share their plans.
But Empire said it began searching for a new tenant when the bookstore told them it was not renewing the lease and only later was asked to keep that information confidential.
“In response, Landlord agreed not to make any announcements about her store closure, and we have not in order to be supportive of Liberation Station’s request,” Empire Eats said in a statement.
Scott-Miller shared text exchanges in which Empire said it would continue to show the unit but would tell them ahead of time. In the text messages shared on social media, the landlord didn’t mention the threats.
Scott-Miller was disappointed.
“That response to me, the lack of empathy was a consideration, was something that we took into consideration when making our decision [not] to renew,” she said.
Since sharing their story on social media, she said she’s heard from others with similar experiences downtown.
“There’s a disconnect, in the human experience, in particular the experiences of Black business owners in the city,” Scott-Miller said. “And that part needs to be addressed. But that’s not something I am going to assign myself to do.”
“I think that downtown Raleigh wants to look good, but I don’t necessarily know if it wants to be good,” she said. “And until those two narratives of looking good and being good are cohesive, then I don’t believe that revitalization is possible.”
This story was originally published April 4, 2024 at 2:59 PM.
