CNN’s Sara Sidner has reported from war zones and frontlines of protests—but she says this story, airing Sunday on The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, left her speechless and emotionally wrecked in the best way. “Some of the stories broke my heart in a thousand pieces,” she tells TheGrio, “and somehow this family is putting it back together again.”
In the upcoming special episode, Sidner follows two families in South Carolina—one Black, one white—who learn they are connected by slavery and Klan violence.
Their connection first came to light when Spencer Simrill, who is white, began researching his family history via historical records and discovering that his family once owned enslaved Black people– many Black people.
“He felt like he couldn’t just discover this and not try to do something about it, to cure it in any way he could possibly do in this day and time, and so he reaches out, sends letters to other members of the Simrill family,” Sidner tells theGrio.
Eventually, there is a response to Simrill’s letters from Michael Simril, a fellow South Carolinian, who happens to be Black and spells his name with one less “l.”
Soon, the two sides would agree to meet up in person at a local restaurant, curious to learn about the mystery of their ties, only to get along naturally and want to learn more.
Now, fourteen years later, the Simril(l)s have an annual family reunion, exchanging hugs and conversations as if they’d known each other forever.
It can be incredibly difficult for Black American families to find records and details of their history, particularly their potential ties to slavery. According to the Pew Research Center, an estimated one-third (or thirty-four percent of Black Americans) report they aren’t sure if their ancestors were enslaved. The Simril(ls) appear to be an even rarer case of a family knowing their past and ensuring the two sides of their family interact.
But their bond is based on more than feel-good moments. Sider’s special explores how both sides of the family face the ugly truth of their past, which includes the discovery that the KKK sexually assaulted the Black matriarch of the Simril family in a racist attack, and other horrors of chattel slavery that put the families on two different paths.
Instead of burying the truth, they confront it together. Sidner says she observed the Simril(l)s are also doing the real work of exploring how to fix the evils of racism that still affect them to this day. “They are not giving you the okey-doke,” Sidner says. “This is real.”
“There is talk of reparations,” Sidner tells theGrio. “And they know that that will have people talking. But they are working out a way of what reparations actually look like within a family, because socioeconomically… the white side of the family has done far better than the Black side of the family as plays out in statistics across the United States.”
Watch the full clip above and catch the episode this Sunday, June 15 at 8pm eastern.
