When Antwan Aiken and his husband Jeremy opened Eggs Up Grill in Morrow last February, they were looking for organizations to partner with to increase their visibility in the community. They started by researching the public library system.
“We … noticed that there were only I think six or seven libraries for the entire county,” Aiken said. “We also noticed that … Clayton County Public Schools is (one of the largest) school district(s) in Georgia. So that disparity just didn’t make sense.”
Clayton Schools addressing learning loss in new AIR program
They realized they were in a book desert, Aiken said. Somewhat serendipitously, Shavawn Simmons walked into the restaurant one day.
Simmons founded a nonprofit called Family Literacy of Georgia and was bringing a new reading program, Read in Color, to the state. She was looking for partners as well. Read in Color, an initiative that distributes books with diverse characters and authors through Little Free Libraries, began in Minneapolis shortly after George Floyd died at the hands of police officers in May of 2020.