
12/07/2025
Missouri’s oldest Black bookstore flips its last page today, and you’re invited to help write the sequel.
From 2-8 PM @ 5547 Troost, snag Black books for $5 paperbacks / $15 hardcovers.
Come through for FREE soul-food plates, 2 raffles, and an open-mic of stories with Ms. Willa, her fam, and the Freedom-Fighter crew.
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THE BACKGROUND
For more than 40 years Ms. Willa Robinson an 84-year-old Book Collector, Freedom Fighter & Visionary has kept Willa’s Books & Vinyl alive on Troost Avenue.
It is Missouri’s oldest and longest-standing Black-owned bookstore, a living archive of 20,000+ works, including first-edition Frederick Douglass volumes and books printed in 1863, the very year our ancestors seized emancipation.
Last year when she was 1 week from being forced to sell everything to non-Black collectors due to gentrification and her rapidly declining health, The Kansas City Defender stepped in and began covering her rent and also mobilized 40 volunteers to catalog her 20,000 book collection.
Now she is passing the torch to us and we will be converting her storefront into a free public archive, mutual-aid hub, Freedom School site, and the Defender’s first brick-and-mortar HQ.