This is about as corrupt as can be.

The story that Miller, 63, and her relatives tell is a sepia-toned nightmare straight out of the Old South. For years, she says, the family was forced to pick cotton, clean house and milk cows—all without being paid—under threat of whippings, rape and even death. They say they were passed from white family to white family, their condition never improving, until finally, hope that life would ever get better was nearly lost. Technically, the Walls were victims of “peonage,” an illegal practice that flourished in the rural South after slavery was abolished in 1865 and lasted, in isolated cases like theirs, until as recently as the 1960s. Under peonage, blacks were forced to work off debts, real or imagined, with free labor under the same types of violent coercion as slavery. In contrast with the more common arrangement known as sharecropping, peons weren’t paid and couldn’t move from the land without permission. “White people had the power to hold blacks down, and they weren’t afraid to use it—and they were brutal,” says Pete Daniel, a historian at the Smithsonian Institution and an expert on peonage.

The family was isolated, they had no electricity, phone, or radio, and were forbidden to leave to see relatives.

Cain Wall escaped during World War 2 but within two hours he was picked up by white men saying they would take him to a recruiting office, instead, they took him back to the farm.

While working for another family, the Walls finally got their freedom. Mae Miller, at the time she was 18, refused to clean the house. The owner threatened to kill her and she ran away. The owner was furious and kicked them off the farm.

Miller eventually married and found out she could not have kids as a result of the rapes:

The most crippling violence began when Mae was about 5. She vividly remembers the morning she and her mother went to the Gordon home to clean it. They were met by two men—faces she recognized. One tugged on Mae’s long hair, she recalls. She tried to hide in her mother’s skirt, but he grabbed her and pushed her to the floor. Both she and her mother were raped that morning. “I remember a white woman there saying, ‘Oh no, not her, she’s just a yearling,’” Mae says. “But they just kept on and on.” Mae says her mother begged the men to spare her daughter, and a white women cleaned her up after the attack. That was the first of numerous times she was raped, she says. “They told me, ‘If you go down there and tell Ol’ Cain, we will kill him before the morning.’ I knew there wasn’t anyone who could help me.”

didn't they had some thing a while ago when they reported that there was slaves in Georgia in 91.

Yeah I believe they had some slaves (obviously illegal) in Georgia in 91.

Pretty sick though.

The South, especially states like Mississippi was a disgusting mess when it came to this issue. This isn't a shock though b/c so many blacks were absolutely slaughtered until I believe the 1970s and there are still plenty of hate crimes, but nothing like how it was 4 decades ago.

Posted by 4949:

That was 46 years ago. Times have changed since then. Catch up.

Slavery ended over a hundred yrs ago and racism still exist. Are you African American?

Posted by Cookdcokehop:

Posted by 4949:

That was 46 years ago. Times have changed since then. Catch up.

Slavery ended over a hundred yrs ago and racism still exist. Are you African American?

You'll never know what I am.