By Tracie Fellers
Correspondent
Raleigh’s Liberation Station, one of few Black-owned children’s bookstores in the country, has been without a brick-and-mortar home for over a year. But owners Victoria Scott-Miller and Duane Miller are on their way to changing that by becoming part of a cohort of Black-owned businesses in southeast Raleigh’s Montague Plaza.
Liberation Station, which opened its first physical location in downtown Raleigh on Juneteenth 2023, moved out of the space on Fayetteville Street in April 2024. As reported by The Tribune, safety concerns and threats aimed at the bookstore were factors in the Millers’ decision.
Scott-Miller told The Tribune the bookstore’s next space would be a place “where we can really amplify the programming that we were already doing but just on a larger scale, so that it can be a bit more community centered and community accessible.”
In a recent interview, Scott-Miller used the word prophetic, but she wasn’t referring to herself. In her words (via Instagram), Liberation Station has found its “forever home” in a 1,000 square-foot space in Montague Plaza, a hub for Black-owned businesses at 2718 Rock Quarry Road. That’s more than enough space “for us to continue doing this work,” she said.
Scott-Miller wasn’t familiar with the shopping center when she and her family were driving through southeast Raleigh in early July. They were looking at homes with an eye toward moving from another part of town, since sons Langston, 14, and Emerson, 9, will be attending schools in the area.
Rain started to pour “and we had low visibility, so we pulled over into what we didn’t know was Montague Plaza,” she said. In the car, she managed to see a small sign that read, “If interested, call Monte” — as in James “Monte” Montague, the real estate developer and SE Raleigh native who envisioned the 16,000 square-foot building that now bears his name.
Scott-Miller called, they met the next day, and a week later — on July 14 — she started a GoFundMe campaign to raise the $60,000 she says it will take for the space to be ready. The plan is to open the new Liberation Station on Juneteenth 2026. “That day is special, it’s liberatory,” she said.
While the fundraiser has already raised more than 45% of its goal, Scott-Miller said the family, who work together to operate Liberation Station, is committed to the effort for a year. “We have to be fully funded,” she said. “The community has to say that they want this, that they desire this, and we have to collectively understand what we’re up against …This has to be a collective dream, which is why we’re going to campaign for a year to meet our goal.”
The money that’s already been generated for the bookstore impresses Montague, who said about half of the 13 spaces available in Montague Plaza have been filled. “The support is amazing that they’re having,” he said of Liberation Station. “It’s incredible.”
Scott-Miller said when she made that first phone call to Montague, he told her he’d been waiting for her to call. When asked about that conversation, Montague said he thought Liberation Station would be a great fit for the shopping center’s mix of businesses and a place that many people in the community would welcome. He felt “it would be embraced,” he said.
The Millers will hold a community event to share information about the bookstore’s future reopening Aug. 17, 2-4 p.m., at the Richard B. Harrison Library, 1313 New Bern Avenue.
