[8][9][10][11] In 2003, Mae and all six of her siblings joined a class action lawsuit seeking reparations to descendants of enslaved people from several private companies with lawyer Deadria Farmer-Paellmann.

[8][14] Historian Antoinette Harrell believes that Miller's father Cain Wall lost his own farmland after he signed a contract that he could not read which indebted him to a local plantation owner.

[3] Peon owners used violent coercion akin to that of slavery to force black people to work off imagined debts with unpaid labor.

[16] Like most peons, the Wall family were not permitted to leave the land, were illiterate, and were under the impression that "all black people were being treated like that".

[12] Mae alleges that, starting at 5 years old, she was repeatedly raped along with her mother by the white men of the Gordon family.

"[12] Mae recounted first running away at 9 years old, but she was returned to the farm by her brothers, where her father told her that if she ran away, "they'll kill us.

[3] However, her situation was hardly unique: White landowners used threats of violence and worked with law enforcement to keep people in peonage.

Smithsonian Institution historian Pete Daniel noted that "white people had the power to hold blacks down, and they weren't afraid to use it — and they were brutal".

[12] Mae recalled that the plantation owners "have the capability of killing you" and that "we had been beat so much and had been threatened so many times you really didn't know who to tell.

[3] Annie Wall suggested that shame prevented former peons from coming forward: "Why would you want to tell anybody that you was raped over and all that kind of mess?

"[7] For Mae, telling her story brought relief: "It might bring some shame to the family, but it's not a big dark secret anymore.

"[3] Harrell noted that "people are afraid to share their stories" because "many of the same white families who owned these plantations are still running local government and big businesses".