CNN’s Sara Sidner on the family confronting slavery, the KKK—and choosing healing over hate

In a conversation with TheGrio’s Natasha S. Alford, CNN’s Sara Sidner shares why a powerful new family story left her shaken, inspired—and hopeful for real racial healing.

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, Sidner follows two families in South Carolina—one Black, one white—who learn they are connected by slavery and Klan violence. Instead of burying the truth, they confront it together: grappling with what reparations might look like inside a family, and choosing reconciliation over resentment. “They are not giving you the okey-doke,” Sidner says. “This is real.”

Watch the full clip above.