The southeastern panhandle of Missouri, aka the Bootheel. In early January 1939, over 1,000 Black and White sharecroppers camped out alongside Highway 55 to protest their eviction from the farms where they worked and lived. In late December 1938, a group of Tsalagi (Cherokee) being forced to Oklahoma from Georgia on the Trail of Tears, passed through this same site. In 'Bootheel,' Afro-Cherokee sharecropper and reluctant protestor Earl Jean Wilderness travels back in time one century, learning about her heritage, the history of the land, and how to walk through pain by standing with others.