A Black-owned youngsters’s bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina, is reopening after it had closed its doorways in 2024 because of threats. Liberation Station options books written by Black authors that the homeowners have learn with their youngsters.
Liberation Station is reopening on Dec. 29
The bookstore introduced it will be reopening Dec. 29 after closing its brick-and-mortar location in 2024. It will now be situated on 430 Hill Street in Raleigh.
“It seems like a homecoming,” Victoria Scott-Miller, the shop’s proprietor, informed The News & Observer. “It simply feels proper. This is a time of a lot polarization on this nation. We wanted an area.”
@liberationstationbks ✨ THIS IS WHAT UJAMAA LOOKS LIKE ✨ I’ve watched this neighborhood take our story and switch it into motion. We went viral, sure—however what issues extra is that I’m witnessing cooperative economics in actual time. People selecting one another. People selecting care. As we put together to reopen Liberation Station Bookstore on December twenty ninth, the 4th day of Kwanzaa—Ujamaa, so lots of you’ve requested: “How can I assist?” Here’s how we construct—collectively—and precisely what your help makes attainable: 🛒 AMAZON WISHLIST — Community Care + Creation This record instantly provides what households want and what our future programming requires. • Pads & interval merchandise → dignity, alternative, and care • Diapers & wipes → reduction for folks and caregivers • Food & family staples → nourishment and stability • Podcast gear → the intergenerational podcast studio we’re constructing inside Liberation Station, the place elders, dad and mom, and kids can file, archive, and share tales throughout generations Every merchandise ships straight to us and goes instantly into use. 🔗 https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1BZ9BQVW3YBUO 💚 GOFUNDME — Powering the Reopening These funds help renovations, inclusive and various e book stock, utilities, staffing, and the operational prices it takes to maintain North Carolina’s first Black-owned youngsters’s bookstore alive and accessible. 🔗 https://gofund.me/1e3e105c 🤍 KO-FI — Sustainability & Longevity Monthly members and one-time items assist us plan past survival. This is how we construct one thing that lasts—one thing our kids can inherit. 🔗 https://ko-fi.com/liberationstationbookstore 📦 DIRECT MAIL — Send Love to Our Door Care objects, books, handwritten notes, affirmations—each bit of affection is welcome right here: 430 Hill St Raleigh, NC 27610 In April 2024, we closed as a result of hate tried to win. In December 2025, we reopen as a result of love is disciplined, collective, and unstoppable. Your shares introduced us right here. Your help is carrying us ahead. Your perception in Black youngsters’s liberation is altering lives. Thank you for holding us. Thank you for strolling with us. Welcome to Liberation Station. 🤍
The enterprise was capable of relocate because of a profitable fundraising marketing campaign. After the bookstore shut down, the proprietor sought funding to discover a new and protected location, and a GoFundMe marketing campaign obtained a complete of over $70,000. The prime donor, who recognized herself as Tabitha Brown, gave $10,000 to the marketing campaign.
Liberation Station additionally obtained help in its fundraising effort after TikTok influencer Jen Hamilton shared it on-line after the marketing campaign was created.
“Less than 24 hours. Nearly $6,000 raised. We’ve already met 10% of our $60,000 aim to reopen Liberation Station—and that’s not only a quantity. That’s proof,” the bookstore shared in a July 15 Instagram post.
“Proof that our neighborhood believes on this imaginative and prescient. Proof that no menace, no try to erase us, will preserve us from rising,” it added. “Because a yr in the past, we had been pressured to depart. Threats had been made—in opposition to our security, our kids, our sanctuary. But right here’s what they didn’t know: We don’t fold. We construct. We return.”
The bookstore initially closed after receiving threats
Liberation Station first opened on Fayetteville Street in 2023 with the aim of providing a protected house for Black youngsters to really feel represented in literature. Shortly after it opened, the bookstore began receiving hate messages and demise treats on-line and on the enterprise’s telephone quantity.
As a outcome, Scott-Miller determined to shut the bookstore. She mentioned the brand new location now feels protected as a result of it’s surrounded by different Black-owned companies.
“I do assume that we’ll have the identical sense of safety as a result of it’s supported by the neighborhood,” she mentioned. “This neighborhood has not dissatisfied in rising to the event.”
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