North Carolina's first Black-owned children's bookstore opens in downtown Raleigh

Victoria Scott-Miller opened the first Black-owned children's bookstore in North Carolina last weekend, called Liberation Station.

The new brick-and-mortar store opened its doors on Saturday in downtown Raleigh. Liberation Station started as a pop-up in 2019 after she took her sons to a national chain bookstore to find books with characters that looked like him.

"When we went to the bookstore as a family of four, we thought that it would be an easy, in and out," she says. "But unfortunately, it would be a scavenger hunt that would take us nearly 4 hours to walk out with just a handful of books."

After hours of searching, the family left with only a few books. As their son walked out of the store discouraged, Scott-Miller and her husband considered how they could make a space for their kids to see themselves on the shelves.

"Our children, they need room to be able to dream," she says. "We walked out inspired to create the thing that needed to be seen."

Wondering what's on the shelves at Liberation Station? Scott-Miller shared some book recommendations.

Samantha Raphelson produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Julia Corcoran. Raphelson also adapted it for the web.