In the 1930s, he met writer Langston Hughes and Marxist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya which prompted him to devote his life to socialist reform.
[1][2] In 1963, Willis was hired by San Francisco public television station KQED, which according to the East Bay Media Center, made him the first African American in broadcast journalism in California.
[1][2] For the next 25 years, Willis would direct a number of award-winning films, including "Stagger Lee," a 1970 documentary on Black Panther leader Bobby Seale.
[1][2] Additional films include "The Other America," a documentary on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "white backlash" speech at Stanford University in 1967.
Willis also produced works on a wide range of subject matter from the AIDS crisis, psychedelic drugs to the 1970s California land grab.