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North Carolina’s 1st Black-Owned Children’s Bookstore Forced To Shutdown After Receiving Multiple Death Threats
Hollywood Unlocked ^ | Apr 8, 2024 | Jamal Osborne

Posted on 04/09/2024 4:05:22 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?

North Carolina’s first Black-owned children’s bookstore, Liberation Station is being forced to move out of downtown Raleigh after only being open for less than a year.

Liberation Station reportedly opened on Juneteenth last year. The book store is known for hosting events for the community and selling children’s books written and illustrated by Black and underrepresented authors and illustrators. “Unfortunately, we live in a country that has given permission to the nameless and faceless people to make threats and cause harm, emotional harm,” owner Victoria Scott-Miller said.

On Monday, Scott-Miller took to her Instagram to tell her followers that the bookstore will be moving on April 30 after receiving death threats. “Since September, we’ve faced numerous threats following the opening of our store,” Scott-Miller wrote. “Some we brushed off, while others included a disturbing phone call detailing what our son Langston wore when he was at the shop alone.” Scott-Miller runs the store with her husband and 13-year-old son but after receiving those threats they decided to stop working there two weeks ago. “We went away for two weeks just to breathe and process that the thing we had created for good was now attempting to be destroyed and taken away from us in some way,” she said.

(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; Society
KEYWORDS: blackliteracy; blackowned; hoax; racism
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

I live in Raleigh and can tell you this is hard to believe. This city is left of center and downtown is a melting pot for sure. I’m guessing they ran into financial problems but blamed the nasty racists for their failure.


41 posted on 04/09/2024 5:39:29 AM PDT by Mathews (I have faith Malachi is right!!! Any day now...)
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To: All

Hate crime hoax media cycle:

“Hate crime” occurs -> local to national media attention.

Serious criminal sanctions promised for offenders by local politicians on the bandwagon - and looking for votes.

Commentaries and op ed pieces stating (fill in Republican politician) is to blame for creating a climate of hate.

Investigation proves perp is the minority reporting the crime or another minority group member who did it to ‘raise awareness.’

Story becomes local news only. (Any story where the victim is white = LNO.)

Prosecutors back away and give perp a slap on the wrist.

Rinse and repeat.

50/50 this - or any other ‘hate crime’ - is either by the victim or another minority member.

If this were a college campus, I’d up those odds to 90%.


42 posted on 04/09/2024 5:40:41 AM PDT by TigerClaws
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

“Liberation Station”

Indeed, an uppity leftist hate-whitey indoctrination facility. I would think in NC they were mildly unwelcome, but any death threat was likely a hoax, or another one trying to fake a hate-crime.


43 posted on 04/09/2024 5:41:41 AM PDT by bk1000 (Banned from Breitbart)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

From a different article:

“Scott-Miller blamed much of her decision on the police department’s slow reaction to threats against the bookstore.

She said, “I don’t want to speak ill of the police. 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. There’s a disconnect in the human experience, in particular the experiences of Black business owners in the city, and that part needs to be addressed. But that’s not something I am going to assign myself to do.””

So, it sounds to me like the police asked her for proof and she didn’t want to go through the hassle of providing it for them...


44 posted on 04/09/2024 5:45:00 AM PDT by Mathews (I have faith Malachi is right!!! Any day now...)
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To: Fury
So don’t even open the bookstore? Pathetic.

No wonder more black Americans don’t join FR.

Yes.

It is FReeper's fault that blacks have low literacy rates and businesses that ignore that fact are likely to fail.

We need to do better.

45 posted on 04/09/2024 5:45:18 AM PDT by nitzy (I wonder if the telescreens in 1984 were first called "free Obamascreens")
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

Opened a bookstore aimed at a certain demographic that makes up 28% of the population of town. While there would be some cross over of people not in that demographic they most likely have reduced their potential customer base to 50% of the town. From that 50%, what percentage are avid enough readers that they would come in more than once a year to buy anything.

Not a sustainable business model. Not closing because of threats, closing because of economics but with a political agenda.


46 posted on 04/09/2024 5:47:16 AM PDT by gunnut
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

I kinda call “ false flag” on this to cover a failing business


47 posted on 04/09/2024 5:51:11 AM PDT by silverleaf (“Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out” —David Horowitz)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

If there are threats, track down the culprits and prosecute them. In this day and age there is no excuse for the threats as reported, nor any excuse for not finding the people responsible. Without that effort, I wonder if this is simply an excuse for a failing business. Maybe racist books don’t sell?


48 posted on 04/09/2024 6:19:16 AM PDT by Reno89519 (If Biden is mentally unfit to stand trial, he is mentally unfit to be president. He needs to resign.)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

The store is not making any money, so they made this up as an excuse for going out of business.


49 posted on 04/09/2024 6:31:15 AM PDT by EastTexasTraveler
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To: Fury; roving

Prove what I said was not true.

1. The store was targeting a small subset of the population. Not only real book readers (as opposed to people who read digital books).

2. The literacy rates for blacks are below the national average. A lot of black culture promotes that becoming educated is whiteness and should be avoided.

3. It is in the democrat party interests to keep blacks uneducated so they don’t know how or won’t get off the plantation. I believe it would be in the interests of our society to have blacks (and all Americans) better educated (not indoctrinated), so I all for blacks reading.

4. I can’t recall the last time I saw a black in a public place reading a book. I actually notice people reading books in public as it’s such a rare occurrence, as opposed to having their nose buried in a phone.

So exactly what racist thing did I post?


50 posted on 04/09/2024 6:32:37 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage? (Drain the Swamp. Build the Wall.)
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To: Tax-chick

https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2023/06/16/new-black-family-owned-bookstore-opens-raleigh-nc-liberation-station


51 posted on 04/09/2024 6:33:41 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?
https://bookshop.org/shop/liberationstationbookstore
Archive.is save: https://archive.is/NJ4KQ

Looking at the list of collections, "Diaspora Collection", "Neurodivergent Affirming", and "Socio-Economic collection", it is not hard to see why they went out of business. Parents want to raise their children without politics and indoctrination forced on and fought over every decision they make.

52 posted on 04/09/2024 6:35:43 AM PDT by Widget Jr
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

Catch up quick: Victoria Scott-Miller and her family were inspired to start their own bookstore after Scott-Miller and her oldest son spent nearly five hours at a major chain bookstore hunting for uplifting books featuring characters of color. They walked away with just five.

That experience inspired Scott-Miller, alongside her husband Duane Miller and two sons, Langston and Emerson, to open a pop-up bookstore out of the trunk of their car to sell books their sons could see themselves in.

......................

The big picture: Liberation Station joins a growing cohort of Black-owned businesses near the historic Black Main Street, once a thriving hub of Black businesses near the intersection of Salisbury Street and Hargett Street.

Nearby Black-owned stores include clothing boutique Nashone and Black Friday Market.
“This is our love letter to the city of Raleigh,” Scott-Miller said in a release.


I suspect the grant money ran out.......................


53 posted on 04/09/2024 6:36:57 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: Mathews

My brother-in-law is a regional manager for restaurants right in the center of town. I have not been there in a year, but I can tell you that the streets are always packed. It’s a college town and I it’s always very very busy. It’s impossible to find parking.


54 posted on 04/09/2024 7:04:46 AM PDT by Uversabound (Might does not make right, but it does enforce the commonly recognized rights of each succeeding gen)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

Hoax.


55 posted on 04/09/2024 7:05:40 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

Yawn, ho hum. Smells fishy. Customers usually have no idea who owns stores unless the book store only sold books depicting black characters.

During the lock downs, you know when people were supposed to be in their homes and not out shopping, Austin TX tv news stations were constantly telling people to shop at black stores. Just keepin’ Austin weird.


56 posted on 04/09/2024 7:14:46 AM PDT by bgill (.)
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To: Maskot; roving

Yup. Stereotypes help the lazy and immoral feel better about still living in Mom’s basement.


57 posted on 04/09/2024 7:25:09 AM PDT by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: nitzy; roving; Fury

Literacy….have you read the crap posted to FR from those journalistic titans like Slay News, Gateway Pundit, and economic doom pr0n sites pushing gold and taking payment in fiat currency?

No race has a monopoly on stupid. Stupid is a learned trait. It’s embodied in ”ah, the store owners made it up, that’s bs, nobody made threats, it’s a false flag” then stating elsewhere “oh, this conservative store closed it’s gotta be thru no fault of their own, prolly Antifa threatened them and there were locusts”.

Do I think FR is a racist site? No. Do I think Trump is a white supremecist? Hell no. Are there some people who blame race instead of their own personal failures? Every day.


58 posted on 04/09/2024 7:25:16 AM PDT by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

My daughter managed the children’s department at a Barnes and Noble. Her department was the only one making money in the store, so naturally they had her making coffee at the in-house Starbucks. Management was pretty stupid. She was such a great emissary for children’s literature that kids would ask mom to go to the bookstore to see Ashley.

She also had a few tricks to “hide” the offensive books from ready view. Even though she isn’t there anymore, she’s still an expert in children’s literature and advises parent friends on good choices.

It’s sad that peo9ple want to segregate books. One of my favorites when I was a kid featured a black kid in the pictures. I didn’t care. (It wasn’t Little Black Sambo)

I suspect the store was losing money due to trying to serve 3% of the population and couldn’t pay the rent, so naturally death threats it is.


59 posted on 04/09/2024 7:49:28 AM PDT by cyclotic (Don’t be part of the problem. Be the entire problem)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

My criticism is not with your correct claims about reading. That’s borne out by research.

I see black Americans reading quite a bit. Different areas I suppose.

My criticism is that 1) you were minimizing the attempt to open the bookstore. That’s the American way. Who cares if they cater to a subset of the population? Guess what - that happens all the time. Did the bookstore have a sign that said “Blacks Only”?

And 2) you impugned the bookstore exactly because of who they catered to. Again, who cares? I want small businesses to succeed. I’m disappointed they didn’t.


60 posted on 04/09/2024 7:51:12 AM PDT by Fury
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