Lisette’s Take: “She had a life-changing incredible junction moment that started ten years ago on a journey that led her to exhume her great, great, great-grandfather who was buried on an unmarked grave in a former plantation.” To hear all episodes and learn more about Lisette Nieves, visit Lisette-Nieves.com
Cheryl Wills is an institution in New York City and national news, with 30+ years in network television. She has deepened our understanding of the role Black Americans played in building and protecting our country with her book series on her family’s transition from slavery to freedom ("Die Free: A Heroic Family Tale," "The Emancipation of Grandpa Sandy Wills," "Emancipated: My Family’s Fight for Freedom," and "EMMA.")
Lisette Nieves: Good afternoon everyone. This is Lisette Nieves. I'm excited to be here at The Junction podcast. And today, I'm telling you, this is going to be a delicious conversation.
We have Cheryl Wills with us today. And what is so exciting is because, what we're going to discuss is what the epitome of what it means to be at a junction point is. And all this other delicious New York stuff. So I can't wait to get started.
Nieves: And just to warm up the conversation. I'm just going to ask you a quick question. So where were you coming from today?
Wills: I came from home. I live on Long Island. Lisette, by the way, thank you for having me. This is so exciting. And I'm a commuter, you know, from back in the days when I was born in Elmhurst hospital, raised in the Rockaways in the shadow of the A-Train. So I'm a commuter girl, you know.
Nieves: Oh, I love it. I'm a Wyckoff Heights. I was born there, raised in Brooklyn. It's not too often we get to meet someone who has their birth story also in New York.
Wills: Exactly. So I'm a native New Yorker, and so I came through Port Authority, walked over to Ninth Avenue. You know, our newsroom used to be at 42nd and 10th. So I'm in familiar territory right now.
Nieves: I love it. I love it. So everyone, I want to say a few things about Cheryl. Other than her just being fabulous, is that she's, she's an institution for New York. 30 plus years in news, ananchorwoman New York One. Someone that, and I'll say this piece that people don't realize you are doing so much with so many community organizations. And I feel fortunate because I go to an event and I’m like, ‘There’s Cheryl again.’
And so I thank you because you not only tell stories of New York, you really are part of New York.
Wills: Absolutely. Nonprofits are the glue that hold this city together. There are so many New Yorkers who are at risk of falling through the cracks. And there are nonprofits. They don't get a lot of credit. You don't see them in the news, but it's my honor to put them on the news because they are preventing tragedies every day for children, people of all ages. And I admire that tremendously. And I always give them a platform.
Nieves: Oh, boy. See, this is why we could keep going. No but I think that's actually really important, because when you think about New York, most of the direct services happen through nonprofits, right? You know, it's interesting, I just came back from a trip from the UK and they don't have that, right?
Nieves: They do the direct services, government.
Wills: They take care of their people. What a concept.
Nieves: They do. Could you imagine? Let's just say we didn't talk about health care while I was there. We were not going to talk about that.
But today this is about you. And I just wanted to jump in and get into the conversation and talk about this incredible junction moment that you had that started on a journey ten years ago. And it was with your, if I'm correct, great, great, great-grandfather,
Wills: Sandy Wills.
Nieves: Sandy Wells, walk me through that.
Wills: Absolutely, Lisette.I didn't grow up knowing who my great, great, great-grandfather was. I didn't know anything about my ancestors who were enslaved in the United States. And that bothered me, especially when I became a student and I learned about slavery and the Civil War and realized I had a blood connection.
But all names and legacies had disappeared. And ten years ago, I go on Ancestry.com. I'm going back, you know, and my family stayed in Haywood County, Tennessee, for more than a century and a half. My father was born in Haywood County, and when I saw the name Sandy Wills, I saw an acronym: United States Colored Troops. And I said, no way.
Wills: What? No way. I had a great, great, great-grandfather who fought in the Civil War. And Lsiette, I was so proud.
Nieves: Yes,
Wills: My father was a veteran. He served during the Vietnam era. And when my father was killed in a motorcycle accident, I was just 13, which is also that hole in my heart.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Wills: ou know, that hole that when you're wounded as a child, that hole never closes.
Nieves: Understood.
Wills: You just learn to live with it. And because my father died at the age of 38, a New York City firefighter right in the heart of Midtown, I wanted to reconnect with his legacy because he died so abruptly. He didn't know who he was. And his story is very profound. But I wanted to reconnect him to Sandy.
Wills: And I found the plantation.
Nieves: Wow.
Wills: Haywood County. Lisette, is that it was untouched, just the way my Civil War era ancestors left it.
Nieves: Unbelievable. Paint that picture visually for people, right? Because here are, you say, ‘I found the remains right of my great great great grandfather, right in Haywood County,’ Give me a visual.
Wills: So I walk onto this former slave plantation, and it's frozen in time. And that the same family still owns it.
Nieves: Oh my…And it's still functioning…
Wills: It's still a functioning—they call it a farm. I call it a former plantation. They see it as. Y
Nieves: It's in their rearview mirror, right.
Wills: I see it as a former prison for my family.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Wills: And I couldn't believe how it was unchanged. They still had the same cotton that my family picked. It just grows year after year.
Nieves: Unbelievable
Wills: Same rows that my family walked through, stooped over in the hot sun. And here I am looking at this in real time in the 21st century. I had to appeal to them and say, ‘I need to know where my family, where the Black people who lived here and worked here are buried.’
And they were kind once they understood my motive was not to cause any harm to them, they opened their hearts and they took me right to the burial ground.
Nieves: And so the burial ground was a protected burial ground,
Wills: They protected it for generations.
Nieves: Fascinating.
Wills: Can you imagine?
Nieves: Wow.
Wills: They considered it sacred ground. They could have—and this is why I will always respect them.
They could have destroyed it and expanded their crop. It's one acre in the middle of a plush working farm, and they work right around it.
Nieves: Wow.
Wils: And so I thanked them on behalf of my family. But then I hit them with the bombshell that they didn't know was coming. I said, ‘’I'm hiring an archeology team.”
And they were taken aback for a moment.
Nieves: For a few moments, I hear.
Wills: For a few moments. They had to digest that. You know, they didn't see that coming. But I said, “A Civil War veteran is potentially buried here.” They said they didn't have the records anymore. I accepted that, and I said, “Well, since you don't have the records of the people who are buried here, and I have every reason to believe Sandy—I know he lived here. I know his wife lived here.”
And I gave them all the documentation and they accepted that. They said, ‘okay, this is real. They lived here.’ I said, “Then he's buried here because the U.S. Army didn't respect his service. They didn't give him a proper military burial.” And I said, ‘t's time.’
Nieves: Wow.
Wills: I will not stop until I find the remains of Sandy Wills.
So every time I sold the book I put it in a separate account. And now here I am ble to reinvest it in something so profound. So long story short, I said, “I'm going to take the chance. It's worth it.” He said. “Okay.” He said, “Don't be mad at me If we open up all these graves and there's nothing there.”
I said, “I won't be mad, but I feel the weight of the ancestors need to do this.”
Wills: So, fast forward. He opened more than a half dozen graves and there was one grave with remains, skeletal remains, that fit a man 50 years old—Sandy was 50—the bones were that of a male. A Black male. And most importantly, they found a whole set of teeth.
Nieves: Unbelievable.
Wills: And the teeth are the Holy grail. Once you find the teeth, it's going to tell you exactly who that individual was. And it turned out to be Sandy. And I reached out to the U.S. Army, and I said, “My archeology team found my grandfather. It is not too late for you to honor this veteran.” They did their own research. They made sure I was, in fact, the great great great granddaughter of Sandy Wills.
It took them months to reconfirm everything that had been done because, you know, they don't want to make a mistake. Right? And they said, “We'd be honored to rebury private Sandy Wills.”
And we had a beautiful ceremony. I mean, the police shut down the road from rural Haywood County to Memphis to West Tennessee State Veterans Cemetery. We had a police escort to give this veteran, this American hero.
Nieves: Yes, an American hero.
Wills: He's an American hero. And to finally give him the military ceremony and salute that he did not receive in 1889. And Lisette, you know what also touched me? Emma, his wife was a powerful woman. A former slave in her own right. And she was not given the widow's salute when they fold the flag and hand it to the widow.
Nieves: That's right.
Wills: And they gave it to me on behalf of Emma. Proudest moment of my life.
Nieves: I would say that would be a beyond a juncture moment that happened right there. Did you feel every generation in you at that moment?
Wills: Absolutely. And I felt also, from a spiritual point of view, Lisette, that this was my assignment from when I was born. I consider it a sacred assignment. I could see how every move I made and everything that happened to me, including my father's tragic death, opened me up and kept my eyes on the goal, even though I didn't see it at times. But I was always moving in that direction, always involved in Black studies.
Nieves: Absolutely
Wills: Always involved in civil rights, always giving back. And I when this moment came, I said, wow, I was on this road all along.
Nieves: And this is a movement that's international.
Wills: It is.
Nieves: It's a global movement for indigenous people, for people who have been forgotten, denied, right?
Wills: And erased.
Nieves: And erased, yes.
Wills: The erasure is what really gets me. See, what happened to my family, Lisette, was not an accident.
Nieves: Oh, it was intentional, yes.
Wills: Yes, it was intentional. Let's bury the evidence of these people, these outstanding, beautiful people who were exploited their entire lives.
Let's make it so their descendants don't even know what happened to them. And that's why I was relentless.
Sandy Wills wasn't just happened to be. No, no, no, because there were other Civil War veterans.
Nieves: Oh, absolutely.
Wills: Let me tell you, there are Confederate soldiers who are honored more than the Union soldier who was on the right side of history.
How are these Confederate monuments and grave sites soaring into the sky? They were on the wrong side of history.
Nieves: I'm sure the street names in Haywood County are for the Confederates.
Wills: Everywhere. Everywhere. And my grandfather, who was on the right side of history, is in an unmarked grave? That's why I was relentless.
Nieves: But you know what? It is something that's super inspiring. And I will tell you, when I heard your story and I was saying, there is a piece of my childhood that has been forgotten. And I had petitioned and I had been in foster care, and I had petitioned to get my records, and I have petitioned to find out what actually happened to my birth mother.
And you inspired that. And I want you to know that. And I was like, I'm going to say it. I haven't said it publicly. And I'm raised by the most incredible step mom ever. She's my mom. And, but when you see it in writing, when you see what people want to hide, it was really powerful.
And it made me think then of also all the incredible people that have served in the military inour family who have been ignored as well too. But I was thinking of Sandy Wills and he became a soldier, at a time, I was looking at the dates when, if it were not for Black troops, we would have lost.
Wills: Correct.
Wills: Okay, so this is, this is profound. This is not, if it were not for the recruitment of Black troops, we would have lost.
Nieves: 100%. So thank you, Sandy.
Wills: Thank you Sandy Wells and the United States Colored Troops and their legacy.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Wills: And what breaks my heart, Lisette, is that most people learned about them through a movie called “Glory.”
Nieves: That's right.
Wills: They’re not taught in schools, which is a tragedy beyond…that's why I will wake up early in the morning, go to a school, and then go be the primetime anchor on New York one.
Nieves: That's right, that's right.
Wills: Because I will go representing a member of the United States Colored Troops. And I think, what if I was a kid and a descendant of a United States Colored Troop veteran walked in my classroom?
What would that have been for me? So this is a great responsibility, and I get to paint a picture about the Civil War in a way that students go, “oh.” It's not taught properly, in my opinion. It's taught about a war between mistakes and, you know, the rights of owners and I'm like, no, no, no, no, sorry, the Civil War was about slavery.
Full stop.
Nieves: You are the Fund for the City of New York's champion this year. You deserve to be our wonderful champion. I mean, there was no question. You really represent just a real global movement of reclamation. It really is. It's global. It's like what your story is more than, more than the United States. It really is.
Wills: Amen.
Nieves: But I did want to talk to you a little bit about being a journalist.
Wills: Yeah.
Nieves: This is a time where it's not exactly…people aren't running to journalism school, right? This is
Wills: We’ve been demonized. It's very hurtful, I'm telling you. Is that my heart is broken about what's going on. The demonization of journalists now, from the federal government, is heartbreaking.
We are essential. The First Amendment, I thought it was sacred, but now we see that many people don't believe in freedom of speech, freedom of press. And they want to, you know, control the press, which I find unacceptable. And, I'm getting choked up thinking about it. I never thought I would see such hostility.
Nieves: Oh, absolutely.
Wills: The hostility.
Nieves: The hatred.
Wills: The hatred, you know? But we're strong, the members of the press corps, we're strong. We're going to survive this, and we're going to survive this intact. And we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. But there's a very powerful lesson to be learned here. And we write the first draft of history.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Wills: And that's what I'm most proud of. And we're going to write about this as well. And our bylines will be clear with our names of what we survived during this time. And I think people need to understand we shine a light in the darkness. If you want to live in darkness, that's your right. But we're never going to stop shining a light.
Nieves: Absolutely not. And, you know, I think about you, I think about the legacy of Ida B Wells. I think about what she wrote about. Right. People didn't want to write about lynchings.
Wills: And the anti-lynching crusades that she led.
Nieves: And I think about what you do. I think about what Bryan Stevenson’s done and how he's reimagined Montgomery. Wow.
Wills: And that museum
Nieves: And that museum is extraordinary. It's so important to understand our country,
Wills: And our history.
Nieves: And our collective history.
Wills: Warts and all.
Nieves: What do you do to take care of yourself?
Wills: Yeah, yeah, personal care so that I don't burn out. Well, I make sure one of the things I do every night I meditate, and I take a hot bath.
Nieves: Oh, yes.
Wills: You know, I like my candles,
Nieves: Oh, you have a good one.
Wills: I light my candles, and I completely decompress, and it's very important not to take things personal and it's easy to do that with everything that you see in the news. You know, it's some of it is so offensive, just personally offensive.
Nieves: Oh, it's an assault.
Wills: It's an assault. And I just remind myself, Cheryl, get centered. Don't take this personal. Don't let this trouble you because it breaks—literally, my heart is broken.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Wills: I dont know any other way to say it. You know, I think about my grandparents walking through the back doors of establishments and attending substandard schools and being humiliated every single day of their lives during Jim Crow. And I remember when I was a kid, Lisette, I would say, “Oh, glad, that's not happening to me.” And now here I am.
Nieves: Yes. And this is one of those moments where it feels a bit overwhelming. My, I was, I want you to meet him, my father-in-law was one of the first to desegregate higher ed in Alabama. And he is part of history, and he's extraordinary.
Wills: I bet
Nieves: And his college, close to 50 years later invited him to come back. And he had not been on that campus because his first year on that campus, no one talked to him, right?
And yet he was at a moment where he was feeling all of his classmates reaching out and paying amends, right? There's something about being in your 70s and 80s, right? It wasn't that long ago. And, and he says to me, “I don't know what to do right now.”
He's so disappointed in this time.
Wills: It’s heartbreaking
Nieves: And so it really is us who are have to keep that energy up.
Wills: Yes.
Nieves: What would you offer as a thought to that, that 19-year-old, that 20-year-old young woman?
Wills: Yeah. With big dreams,
Nieves: With big dreams and hopes and people are telling her don't care so much about this or that. What would you say to her?
Wills: You know, I would say, Cheryl, it's going to be all right. You're not going to see the whole world. Just continue to take one step. When I was young, when I went to a very famous broadcasting school. Newhouse at Syracuse University.. And I remember I got a little anxiety toward graduation because you get to the end. It's just like,now what? They're not placing. And I had to take a deep breath and I ended up getting—and here I am from the number one market, the most competitive market in America. And everyone was going back to like Arkansas.
Nieves: Yes, exactly. Their local stations…
Wills: :ocal stations in Arkansas. I'm in the most competitive market where everyone even wants to be a P.A. But I managed to get a PA job and you know I just take baby steps. I didn't get a trust fund. I'm not a trust fund baby. I am self-made. No one left me anything. Everything I have I had to create, except for the strength I inherited.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Wills: I inherited character. I inherited a lot of good things. But monetarily, that was on me. No one had any money to leave me. So I'm so grateful that I never gave up. And I would tell that 20-year-old Cheryl, you're going to do things that will blow your mind. Just stay the course. And I'm proud to say I stayed the course, made tons of mistakes, fell on my face, and wallowed in it sometimes.
But I always kept my eyes, even with mud on my face. Because, you know, I tell young people now, right and wrong is so subjective. They're lessons. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. . Sometimes you'll make a left when you should have made a right. Sometimes you'll get up when you should have sat down. Sometimes you'll speak when you should have been silent. That happens to us all. That's part of being passionate. But just keep your eye on the prize, the main goal.
Wils: And that's why I am very grateful for, at 59,
Nieves: I love it.
Wills: I’ll be 60 in September.
Nieves: And glowing. Look at you, look at you.
Wills: Yes, 1966 was a good year. But I'm proud that that 20-year-old didn't give up.
Nieves: Oh, we are all proud. You are a treasure for us. We're so excited. Sandy Wells as well. Oh my goodness, how lucky. Any other names you want to add before we close out?
Wills: I speak the names of his wife, Emma Wills. I speak the name of, thank God, my living mother, Ruth Wills, who was my direct, you know, right in my line of sight. I talk about the ancestors, but I was lucky enough to have a very strong mom whose in her mid 80s now, and I appreciate I was lucky enough to have all four grandparents.
Nieves: That's a blessing.
Wills: Listen. And they were all the same. My parents met in church. They all came from the South, ran from Jim Crow to New York City, specifically Queens, and their kids fell in love and got married.
So I speak all of their names. Hardy and Sally and Opal and Fred, and I'm so glad that I was able to just feel their energy, when they lived. And, I'm just grateful for this opportunity. I can't wait to receive the award in person.
Nieves: I'm so excited.
Wells: When I saw the email. I was like, “oh!” You know, it was so heartwarming. And I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude. Thank you. And you’re a beautiful person, by the way. I’m telling you.
Nieves: Well, thank you.
Wills: You have a very warm spirit. I remember meeting you, and you know, God bless you for how you lead this city and reinvest in and support nonprofits.
Nieves: Well, thank you, Cheryl. It's an honor to be with you. Everyone, speak the names of the people you love, who have loved you, who've brought you to where you are. And, Cheryl, thank you for being one of those people for me.
Wills: Thank you, Lisette
Nieves: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in, and have a great evening.
Credits: Thank you for listening!
At The Junction, we reflect on the moments that make us — with today’s most impactful leaders. The show was created and hosted by me, Lisette Nieves, and produced by LWC Studios.
This show is available everywhere you listen to podcasts, and on YouTube. I encourage you to share video and audio episodes by linking to them on social media, websites, and by sharing them in your online affinity groups. Our executive editor is Juleyka Lantigua. Michelle Baker is our senior producer. Alyson Rich and Cesar Ventura provided administrative support. CDM Studios is our live recording location. Our theme song is “La Juntura Cultural,” arranged by Randy Seriguchi, Jr. and D'Artanian Woodard, produced by Randy Seriguchi, Jr., and recorded by Farmacy Studio.
For more information and episode transcripts, visit Lisette-Nieves.com. If you’d like to reach out, please email us at Hello@LWCStudios.com.