“Ancestry.com is proud that Cheryl Wills used our comprehensive website to make such a fascinating discovery. Die Free is a perfect example of why we do what we do! Cheryl Wills skillfully worked to uncover her family’s past; she learned the story of her ancestor Sandy Wills including details of his sale into slavery, his noble service in the Civil War and how he used his new-found freedom to carve out a new beginning for generations to come. The author’s deep love for her family shines through on every captivating page of Die Free. In the mingling of sweet and painful memories, she finds a certain freedom of her own. She reminds us that her ancestors and our ancestors did not live in vain. Their strong spirits will continue to inspire us – if we let them.”
Loretto “Lou” Dennis Szucs
Vice President, Ancestry.com
Author, “They Became Americans”
Co-editor “The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy.”
“Die Free is a compelling American story as Cheryl Wills traces the lives of her forefathers and foremothers. She highlights a critical part of American history that puts into perspective where we have come from to get to where we are. Cheryl writes with the creative flair of a novelist but is, in fact, documenting history. This is a must-read book for all members of the family, young and old alike.”
Rev. Al Sharpton
President, National Action Network
“Die Free is a testament of courage. My friend Cheryl Wills’ unselfish memoir is a history lesson for us all. She boldly goes where few authors have gone before. She gracefully shares her family’s history over the last two centuries and unabashedly proclaims their victory in surviving slavery and Jim Crow in the United States of America.”
Hazel N. Dukes
President, NAACP NYS
“Don’t let the smooth and mellow news anchor delivery fool you. Get NY1 news veteran Cheryl Wills talking about the suffering and sacrifice of her enslaved African ancestors, and there’s a passion unleashed that you wouldn’t believe.”
Nayaba Arinde
New York Amsterdam News
“Finally, we get the stories through our eyes, through our interpretations and from our memories. It is indeed time for us to remember, to record, and to honor all of the people who make up the stories in our African-American narrative. They are heralding loudly today even as others call them unsung. We hear them clearly on the wings of the Sankofa and we will continue to testify. Cheryl Wills’ Die Free most certainly is quite a testimony.”
Marva Allen
CEO, HueMan Bookstore, Harlem, N.Y.
“In Die Free, I believe Cheryl has excised her own anger at a world that enslaved Sandy, took her father too soon, and did so much damage to the generations in between. Though it has taken her more than twenty years and a dozen starts and stops for this storyteller to share her own, she has done the work. She is and we, as a whole are, better for it.” From The Foreword …
Terrie M. Williams
President and Founder, The Terrie Williams Agency and The Stay Strong Foundation, author of Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting
“Cheryl Wills has used her journalistic gift by taking her pen in hand to write the story of her family life and she presented it in a colorful and fascinating way; which is, indeed, the foundation for an electrifying movie. I hope that all who read Die Free will be inspired to put in writing their family life’s journey.”
Dabney N. Montgomery
Tuskegee Airman, World War II, Great Grandson of Joe Montgomery, U.S. Colored Troops