Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY) community members filled the Fiterman Hall conference room on February 27 for the inaugural Afrikan Heritage month luncheon featuring two powerful speakers— Joy Bivins, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Cheryl Wills an Emmy award-winning TV-journalist at Spectrum News NY1.

“The energy in this room is truly inspiring,” said BMCC President, Dr. Anthony E. Munroe. “Today’s event is titled Amplifying our Story. This resonates very deeply with me and all of us, because stories are powerful.  They connect us, teach us and inspire us as a community to build together.”

The path to becoming director of the Schomburg Center: A focal point of Harlem’s cultural life
Bivins, who noted the Schomburg Center is turning 100 years old this year, shared details of her own career journey and the roots of her interest in Black history, which she says, is grounded in the need to control the narrative.

“We need to control the stories that are told about who we are,” said Bivins. “Also looking at our intellectual traditions, our cultural traditions and hold them up within another intersection, which is not just American history or the histories in this hemisphere, but also global history.”

While attending the University of Michigan, she spent a great deal of time in the library in the Center for African American and African Studies.  When she learned she could focus her life’s work on Black people, Bivins, who was interested in education, history and public engagement initially saw herself becoming a professor.  But then she got to graduate school and rethought her path. A mentor suggested pursuing a career in museums.

Bivins told students at the event, it’s okay to have an unclear career path.

“But what you have to do is walk the path, and you have to continue to grow and learn as you walk the path,” said Bivins. “You never know where you will end up. You never know what the possibilities are.  Would I have thought 20 years ago that I would be the director of the Schomburg Center? No. But you have to walk the path because you don’t know what door is going to open for you, and don’t be afraid to walk through that door.”

Today, the Schomburg Center, a focal point of Harlem’s cultural life, functions as the leading national research library in the field of African American and African Diasporic studies.

Meticulous ancestry research brings an ancestor’s legacy into the light with full military honors
Wills told the moving story of finding her great-great-great-grandfather Sandy Wills, a formerly enslaved person in Tennessee, who served during the Civil War with the United States Colored troops, died in 1889, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Through meticulous ancestry research, Wills traced the roots of her family tree and discovered Sandy Wills’ military records. More on-the-ground investigation eventually led her to the location of his grave site in Haywood County, Tenn.

“A civil war veteran who served this country during a seminal event in this country’s history is buried under leaves and debris,” said Wills. “I found that unacceptable.”

Wills hired an archeology team to find and exhume his remains, and in 2024, Army Private Sandy Wills was buried with full military honors at the West Tennessee State Veterans Cemetery in Memphis.

“If we don’t protect our history, 50 years from now someone will be telling someone else their history is nonexistent,” said Wills. “And that’s why I did what I did.   I stand before you the proud great-great-great granddaughter of a civil war veteran named Sandy Wills.”

Wills, whose grandparents moved from the south to New York City, didn’t know about her legacy, including that of Sandy Wills and his wife Emma.

“I had no idea I was related to greatness,” said Wills. “My family roots run deep.”

When she was 13 years old, Wills’ father, a New York City firefighter, was killed in a motorcycle accident.

“One question I had after his death was who are we,” said Wills. “My father was born in Haywood County Tennessee and no one talked about it.  My grandfather was born in the same town.  I asked him, Grandpa, tell me about living through Jim Crow, but he never had much to say.  His father was born in the same place, yet no one knew about Sandy Wills.”

Speaking directly to students in the room, Wills stressed the importance of education.

She told the students although her ancestor Sandy Wills had received an honorable discharge, he couldn’t read a word of it because enslaved people were forced into illiteracy by a slave-owning system.

“Owners knew and the system knew, that if you educate them (the enslaved peopled), they’re going to figure out what a con this is,” said Wills.  “You are being empowered every day you walk into this institution, don’t ever forget, this is your empowerment zone.”

Cheryl Wills is the author of Emancipated:My Family’s Fight For Freedom; Die Free, A Heroic Family History and The Emancipation of Grandpa Sandy Wills as well as Isn’t Her Grace Amazing, the Women who Changed Gospel Music.