vote no on 27. on the night of april 16th, 2013, a mysterious incident south of san jose, marked the most serious attack on our power grid in history. >> if they had succeeded, what would have happened? >> it would have brought down all of silicon valley. >> google, apple, all of these guys? >> that's correct. >> who do you think this could have been? >> i don't know. we don't know if they were a station state or domestic actors. but it was somebody who did have competent people who could plan out this very sophisticated attack and execute it.

the millers are a large family that enjoy getting together. they purchased this historic house in southern virginia near where they grew up, to have a place for family celebrations. >> this is an original room from the 1800s. >> but no one could have imagined how the history of the home and its grounds would have changed everything they thought they knew about their family's history. >> it's like a full circle. like it was meant to happen. to me, it was like it was meant to happen. this is god. >> uh-huh. >> this is where we're supposed to be. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm anderson cooper. >> i'm sharyn alfonsi. >> i'm jon wertheim. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight, on "60 minutes." medium latte, half-caff, no foam. quite the personalized order. i know what i like. i've been meaning to ask you, carl.

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if there's one thing we can't live without in our modern world, it's electricity. it provides heat and light, pumps water and fuel, refrigerates food and breathes life into our tvs, computers and phones. so it's no surprise the north american electric grid, which creates, moves, and delivers our electricity, is considered the most critical part of our critical infrastructure. what is surprising is the nature of the grid itself. a hodgepodge of public and privately owned half century old tech that's increasingly vulnerable to severe weather, cyber attacks, and even physical assaults.

as we first reported earlier this year, no government agency, not even the department of energy, is truly in charge of protecting it. one attack nine years ago was a wakeup call for industry and government alike. >> there's been a major transformer leak at a pg&e substation. >> reporter: on the night of april 16, 2013, a mysterious incident south of san jose marked the most serious attack on our power grid in history. >> pg&e tells us someone may have fired some shots into that transformer. >> reporter: for 20 minutes, gunmen methodically fired at high voltage transformers. at the metcalf subpower station. security cameras captured bullets hitting the chain link fence. >> they knew what they were doing. they had a specific objective, to knock out the substation. >> reporter: at the time, john wellinghof was chairman of ferc,

the federal energy regulatory commission, a small government agency with jurisdiction over the u.s.' high voltage transmission system. you were concerned enough that you flew out there? >> that's correct. and i took two other individuals, that were trained u.s. special forces. they train people to attack infrastructure. >> reporter: and what the former commandos found looked familiar. they discovered the attackers had reconnoitered the site and marked firing positions with piles of rocks. that night, they broke into two underground vaults and cut off communications coming from the substation. >> but then they went from these vaults across this road, over into a pasture area here. >> there were at least four or five different firing positions. there was no security at all, really. >> reporter: they aimed at the narrow cooling fins, causing 17 of 21 large transformers to overheat and stop working. >> they hit them 90 times, so they were very accurate.

they were doing this at night with muzzle flash in their face. >> reporter: someone outside the plant heard gunfire and called 911. the gunmen disappeared without a trace, about a minute before a patrol car arrived. the substation was down for weeks. but fortunately, pg&e had enough time to reroute power and avoid disaster. if they had succeeded, what would have happened? >> it could have brought down all of silicon valley. >> google, apple, all of these guys? >> that's correct. >> who do you think this could have been? >> i don't know. we don't know if they were a nation state or domestic actors, but somebody who did have competent people who could, in fact, plan out this very sophisticated attack. >> reporter: the grid is a sprawling target. there are actually three in the u.s., the eastern, western, and texas has its own. most of us rarely notice substations.

there are 55,000 across the country, each housing transformers, the workhorses of the grid. inside these massive metal boxes, raw electricity is converted to higher or lower voltages. should a transformer explode, like this one in manhattan during superstorm sandy, the system is designed to trigger a localized grid preserving blackout. but if several sections of the grid go down at the same time, the shutdowns can cascade like dominos. that's what set off the great northeast blackout in 2003, leaving 45 million americans without power. a few months before the assault on metcalf, john willinghoff of ferc commissioned a study to see if a physical attack could trigger cascading blackouts.

>> it was a very shocking result to us. there's a very few number of substations you need to take out in the united states to knock out the entire grid. >> knock out the entire grid? >> that's correct. >> how many would it take to put the entire country in a blockout? >> less than 20. >> reporter: the report was leaked to "the wall street journal." it found the u.s. could suffer a coast-to-coast blackout if saboteurs knocked out nine substations. you are relaying this in a very measured way. i think this would be alarming. >> it is alarming, no question. >> reporter: after the metcalf attack, ferc pressed the utilities to harden defenses at their most critical substations, erect walls and sensors to prevent similar attacks. there's now a wall around metcalf. but many substations remain vulnerable targets, like this one we found in southern

california that serves more than 300,000 customers. huge transformers protecting via chain link fence. >> anybody who knows about power systems knows that the grid is physically spread all over the countryside. there are a lot of places vulnerable. >> reporter: dr. morgan is a carnegie melon university professor of engineering, who chaired three national academy of sciences reports on the power grid for the u.s. government. the most recent in 2021, an early report on terrorism was classified for five years. >> we simply made a strong case that the grid was physically very vulnerable. >> why was there a specific report on terrorism and the grid? >> there were concerns about the possibility that a terrorist organization could attack the grid, and around the world, there have been a fair number of attacks on grids. >> they have attacked with bombs, planes and drones. russia's cyber attack on

ukraine's grid in 2015 knocked about 60 substations offline, leaving 230,000 people in the dark. the u.s. secretary of energy has said russia could do the same thing here. >> in the report we did on the resilience of the power system, we did argue that we needed an organization, probably d.o.e. and the department of homeland the department of homeland security, to systematically look at all the kinds of vulnerabilities we have and figure out who could address each. in terms of resilience issues, there's nobody in charge. there's no single entity that has responsibility for everything. >> the u.s. electric grid is the largest machine in the history of mankind. it is a marvel of modern engineering. no one person owns or controls it. it's actually 3,000 different companies, both public and

private sector, that operate different pieces of the electric grid. > reporter: mike is an iraq war vet, a former cop and self-taught grid security expert. by day, he works for the government. in his spare time, he uncovers public information electric utilities would rather not see the light of day. and publishes them on a website called grid security now. he's both fascinated and horrified by the grid. >> i think everybody needs to be as alarmed as i am. we've had disasters in the past but they've always been regional in scale. what we've never had is a national scale blackout, which is completely possible under some known threats, such as the cyber threat, the physical security threat, or even extreme weather. and the u.s. public is completely unprepared to survive without the electric grid for any period of time whatsoever. >> we have wind power, too. >> reporter: so when he moved to texas two years ago, he prepared

for the worst, installing solar, wind, and battery power. >> the whole system is 48 volts. >> reporter: his family survived last winter's deadly storm. hundreds of texans perished. >> the deaths were largely due to hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, because when people got cold, they would go in their car in the garage to stay warm. >> reporter: he's become a thorn in the side of the federal government and utility companies. >> i filed a complaint about physical security and about the texas blackout. >> the government industry think you're an annoyance? >> i've been termed a grid security gadfly. which i wear that as a badge of honor. >> reporter: one frequent target, the department of energy. he told us the grid information the ngutand urseayhepehouryi

sense of it l. therea requiremt report electric disturbance events, but the data from the department of energy is so bad. so i took it upon myself to do some data crunching. what i found is that 38% of the electric disturbance events in the united states are due to physical attacks. >> 38%? that's a lot. >> so in the past decade, there has been over 700 physical attacks against the u.s. electric grid. >> reporter: many are copy cats of the metcalf assault. in 2016, an ecoterrorist in utah shot up a large transformer, triggering a blackout. he said he planned to hit five substations in one day to shut down the west coast. in 2020, the fbi uncovered a white supremacist plot, called lights out, to simultaneously attack substations around the country.

>> we're seeing planning to disable the delivery of power to the american people. >> reporter: dr. liz sherwood randall is joe biden's homeland security adviser. we met with her and the deputy national security adviser for cyber. they told us the mi plans should help secure the grid, but acknowledged the threats are real. >> we have physical threats to the grid. we have natural threats to the grid. we have cyber threats to the grid. >> reporter: newberger came to the white house from the secretive national security agency, where she battled russian hackers in cyberspace. you said you've been talking to private utility companies around the country about the potential for a cyber attack. what are you telling them? >> we're sharing with them some of the context how russia and other countries use cyber in crisis or conflict. we have activity downgraded intelligence, taken any information we have about

malicious software or tactics that the russian government has used, shared that with the private sector with practical advice of how to protect against it. >> isn't the problem that when it comes to the grid, there's nothing like the faa or the food and drug administration or the securities and exchange commission, there's no one overall agency overseeing these -- what you said 3,000 different utilities across the country? >> we don't have one system. we have several grids. we also have individual energy ecosystems in regions and states, and that's part of our strength, because the resources for energy are different in different regions, and we have to acknowledge that we're not going to have a one size fits all system. >> you call it one of our strengths, but it also seems to be one of our vulnerabilities. >> well, in my view, we can't impose the regulations that would -- you would be suggesting

as a federal government. we can set standards and we are setting standards in a variety of arenas. >> reporter: carnegie melon's granger morgan says what government, industry, and law enforcement are doing doesn't meet the magnitude of the threat. >> what we need at this point is to get the white house to put all the key players together in a room to identify the biggest vulnerabilities and then take steps to reduce them. >> i'm surprised that's not being done. >> it has not been done, and it needs to happen now. for adults with generalized myasthenia gravis who are positive for acetylcholine receptor antibodies, it may feel like the world is moving without you. but the picture is changing, with vyvgart. in a clinical trial, participants achieved improved daily abilities with vyvgart added to their current treatment. and vyvgart helped clinical trial participants achieve reduced muscle weakness.

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sounds like the opening line of a southern gothic novel. but as we first reported in may, this story is about a real family and a real house. this country's history, and a man who found himself at the center of far more than he had bargained for. the man is fred miller, a 56-year-old air force veteran, who is looking to buy property in his virginia hometown for his large, extended family's frequent get togethers. he had never heard the name sharswood. and yet this old house would lead him on a journey of discovery, with surprises and revelations that seemed both impossible and inevitable all at once. these are the gentle hills of pennsylvania county, virginia. quiet, rural farm country near the north carolina border that once produced more tobacco than any county in the state. fred miller grew up here in a

close family that likes getting together regularly for birthdays, fish fries, and as his cousin adam miller told us, just about anything. >> we play games and a lot of food competitions. >> i hear the food is mainly cake. [ laughter ] >> yes. >> too many cakes. >> reporter: fred's cousin, tonya miller-pope, and his sister, deborah coles, told us it's a big's family. fred's mother betty and his auaunt brenda are 2 of 11. how many cousins? >> too many to count. >> no wonder fred needed to find a big place. >> reporter: fred lives in california, where he works as a civil engineer for the air force. but he visits the family in virginia often. >> one day out of the blue my sister called me and told me about a big house up the road for sale. >> this sister right here?

>> yeah. >> reporter: karen dixon, fred's baby sister, had spotted it. >> we were riding past the house and saw the for sale sign. i said oh, my goodness, we have to get this house. i called fred, fred, this house is for sale. he said what house? you know the house, the scary house i call it. >> reporter: the scary house was less than a mile up the road from their mom's. they passed it every day as kids on their way to school. what did you know about sharswood? >> absolutely nothing. >> nothing. >> just knew it was a house. >> a big house. sefs debating, should we put in a bid for it? i said yes, absolutely. >> did she twist your arm? >> she did all the twisting she could do. i didn't want to buy it. >> reporter: but thinking his bid would be rejected any way, he made an offer just above the $220,000 asking price. why did you think they weren't going to accept the offer? >> well, i mean, initially, i

thought because i was black they would never sell this house to someone that's black. so for us to own this thing, i thought it would never happen in a million years. >> so guess what happened? a million years. >> a million years happened. >> yes, yes, absolutely. >> reporter: so in may of 2020, fred miller purchased the fully furnished house, plus 10 1/2 acres of land, from a family called the thompsons who had owned it since 1917 >> the first time i drove up to the place, i could just stop at the edge of the road and look up in amazement, like wow, this is mine. >> this is an original room from the 1800s. >> reporter: karen says she got obsessed with the house, spending nights and weekends online, researching its secrets. >> hiding spots they say was from the civil war. so they would hide the valuables. >> a secret hiding place.

>> reporter: she discovered the house was built around 1850, in the gothic revival style, by a well-known new york architect. and she learned and told her family that its name had been sharswood. >> every day, she was calling me with new information. i'm like, my goodness, okay, relax. >> are you exaggerating? >> reporter: but then karen turned up something that stunned her. in the 1800s, sharswood had been the seat of a major 1300 acre plantation, one of the larger ones in the county. what did you think of you owning a plantation? >> i was a little bit -- a little shocked by it i would say. i just wanted somewhere to have a family gathering. >> when i found out it was a plantation, i'm like okay, fred just bought a plantation?

>> it was just a feeling of power. it was just a powerful feeling. >> it is. >> reporter: powerful, but of course, plantation implies slavery. and before the civil war, pennsylvania county held more than 14,000 enslaved people. the state of virginia just under 500,000. >> i said, do you realize what this is? they didn't have a clue. >> reporter: dexter miller, one of fred and karen's many second cousins, knew something about sharswood because years ago, he had been co-workers with bill thompson, whose family then owned it. bill joined us for a conversation on what used to be his childhood porch. >> you grew up in this house. >> i did. this was my home. >> reporter: he inherited much of the farmland and still lives up the road. his sister inherited the house and sold it to fred. >> when fred was buying the

house, he did not think that the house would be sold to a black person. >> why would you think that, fred? >> because, you know, we're in rural virginia. >> this is true. >> reporter: for years, dexter and another second cousin, sonia womack miranda, had been trying to piece together the miller family's origins. a notoriously difficult task for african americans, because records are hard to come by, especially before 1865. >> it really was a hobby. >> it was addictive. it really was. >> you were like private eyes. >> yes. >> reporter: they had been able to trace the whole miller clan back to one woman. >> it's dexter's great grandmother, my great, great grandmother, sarah. >> sarah miller. >> yes. >> reporter: they found a picture of sarah miller. and they had gotten ahold of her death certificate which showed she had been born in

pennsylvania county in 1868, just three years after the end of the civil war. and they found an even better resource. one of their oldest living relatives, a beloved former schoolteacher named marion keys. ms. keys, as everyone here calls her, recently turned 90. sarah miller is the matriarch of the family. >> yes, she was. >> did you know her? >> yes, i did. >> tell us about her. >> she would always be out there with a broom in her hand and she would be waiting for us. >> reporter: marion keys remembers her great grandmother, sarah, as a force to be reckoned with. >> what she wanted you to know, you were going to know it. >> was she persnickety? stern? >> very. she didn't play. she didn't play. but we loved her. >> reporter: but that's where ms. keys' knowledge of miller

family history ended. when you were growing up, what did you learn or hear from your parents about slavery? >> nothing. >> nothing? >> nothing. they did not talk about it. i don't know whether they were afraid, whether it was too miserable or painful or they wanted to forget it. i don't know. but they did not talk to us about it at all. and we didn't ask them questions about it. >> why not? >> we were afraid to. >> reporter: we heard that again and again from members of the miller family. >> slavery wasn't mentioned at all. >> was there almost a code, we don't talk about slavery, so nobody did? >> it was something that every black person knew and you didn't talk about it. your parents would tell you not to discuss grown people business. that's what they would tell you. >> the first time slavery was discussed was in the '70s when

"roots" came about. >> that's the first time when "roots" was on television? >> uh-huh. >> did you read about it in school? >> not much. >> his family also remembers "roots" as pivotal. >> yes. that's when we all -- >> that was an eye opener. >> even after "roots," you didn't say what about our family? >> not at all. >> what held you back? >> i just didn't think they wanted to talk about it. >> didn't you want to know? >> i would have loved to have known. >> reporter: fred's purchase of sharswood was about to give him a crash course in his hometown's slavery roots. it started with a call from two archaeologists who wanted to come do research. >> we start from the idea that these places matter. >> reporter: dennis pogue once worked at mt. vernon. doug stanford at monticello.

they asked if they could explore sharswood. but they weren't interested in the ornate house designed by that famous architect. what they cared about was the dilapidated building that they suspected had once been slave quarters. >> there was once hundreds of thousands of these buildings. this was the most common type of architecture in virginia. >> let me give you the running dimensions. >> reporter: now these buildings are rare, with fewer than 1500 believed to be still standing. and pogue and sanford started a project to search for them. >> so one, two, three, four. >> reporter: fred and karen invited them to come and investigate. they examined, measured, and searched for clues. >> you can see the siding is -- >> reporter: they showed us some of what they found. >> these are the kind of nails that we expect to see on buildings before 1800.

hand made, brought nails. you can see the hammer strokes on the head. >> is this the original siding? >> this is remnants of the original siding. >> reporter: they worked from noon to dusk and finally gave karen and fred their conclusion. >> a big part of that history was it was a quarter for enslaved folks. >> reporter: they say it's one of the best preserved they've seen. they believe it was originally built in the late 1700s as a house for a white family. >> that's where the original door was. >> reporter: and was later divided into two separate single room slave dwellings. >> two families? >> yeah, one household here, another enslaved household over there. >> it just shows there were two different worlds. this big, beautiful world here and lavish. you go behind the house and it

was a whole different story. it's kind of crazy for me just to walk around out there. >> do you own that, the slave house, too? >> i own the slave house, i do. that's mine. >> wow. >> yeah. >> reporter: fred miller's purchase continues to surprise his family, and intrigue historians, when we come back. flo, you're here. this pipe just burst on me. well, you bundled home and auto with progressive, so you have round-the-clock protection on all your stuff. like that cardboard tv.

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for decades, i've longer. worked at the intersection of domestic violence and homelessness. so when prop 27 promised solutions to homelessness, i took a good, hard look. it's not a solution. 90% of the money goes to the out-of-state corporations who wrote it. very little is left for the homeless.

don't let corporations exploit homelessness to pad their profits. vote no on 27.

>> reporter: when fred miller unwittingly purchased now what now knows to be the sharswood plantation house with slave quarters just behind it, he knew virtually nothing about his own family history. he always assumed his ancestors had been enslaved, but it felt to him like an unknowable part of a distant past. learning about his great grandmother, sarah miller, whom his mother had known as a child, piqued his interest. so when he found out her house was still standing, just a few miles away from sharswood, he asked his mother, betty dixon, to go there with him.

>> we're going to walk down through here. >> reporter: betty's grandmother, sarah, had been the first of their ancestors to be born into freedom shortly after the civil war. >> no electricity. >> reporter: betty remembers visiting and spending the night here, with her grandmother and cousins. >> whoa. >> reporter: sarah's house didn't look much bigger than the slave dwelling. just a single room with a smaller one above it. and no indoor plumbing. >> come a long ways, huh? >> sure did. >> glad i didn't have to live in here. >> well, you had to make it work. >> you want a piece of this wall paper to take with you? >> yeah. >> i hope the landlord don't say nothing. >> oh, lord, there you go. >> reporter: sarah miller is buried in the cemetery of the church the miller family still attends.

but unbeknownst to this miller family, just five miles up the road in a different church cemetery was a tombstone that also read "miller." a far older one, with names fred and his family had never heard of. but were about to. in karen's search for information about sharswood, she found a document that mentioned them. >> it gave the names of the original owners, who was nathaniel crenshaw miller and charles edwin miller. >> miller? >> yes, miller. >> any lightbulbs, any wires connect? >> no, not at that point. not at that point, it did not. >> reporter: others had suspected a connection between the two sets of millers. >> because i was telling dexter back in '88 -- >> reporter: bill thompson said he mentioned the thought to dexter 30 years ago. >> what we had been taught in high school was, when they freed

the slaves they just took the last name of the person there, which was miller. i said there's a good chance that your ancestors came off of this farm. >> he did, he said that. >> so you knew this was a plantation? >> i did. >> fred, you said you didn't know. >> i had no idea. >> dexter, you did not tell fred? >> i did not tell fred or anyone. >> reporter: dexter says he kept it to himself because he hadn't found any way to prove it. and that's where this becomes a detective story. with the miller cousins now on a mission to figure out whether it could be possible that their own ancestors might have been enslaved on the very property fred now owned. the first step was to figure out who the last enslaved ancestors were, and sarah miller's death certificate held the answer, the names of her parents, david and violet miller, who would have

been adults at the time of emancipation. did you know anything about them? >> not at all. not at all. >> i didn't know anything about them. we didn't. >> reporter: even marion keys, who knew sarah miller, had never heard their names. >> nothing. sure didn't. i just -- i want everybody to know. >> reporter: enter carise bremer, a local historian and genealogist. karen reached out to her to see if she could help. what are the challenges for finding history of african americans? >> african americans were not listed by name until the 1870 census. before that, they were just a number. >> if they were enslaved, they weren't -- >> listed at all. so really, you're looking for any tips and clues that you can. >> reporter: she started by

sharswood's then owner, nc, for thanl crenshaw miller. >> there he is. he had 58 slaves here. >> reporter: but with only age and gender listed -- >> you have enslaved people, 69, 44, 34, and not a single name. >> reporter: there was no way of knowing whether violet and david were among them. so she looked up david and violet miller in the 1870 census, the first one after the civil war, where they finally appeared by name. it showed they were farm hands, that they couldn't read or write, and it listed their children, including, as carise showed us, a very young sarah miller. >> there's sarah. she's 1 years old. >> this looks like emily, she's 3. and here's samuel. >> yeah. >> he's 5.

met h's r brother, was born before emancipation. so she searched for him in another historical record called the virginia slave birth index, where slave owners had to list births on their property. >> this document -- >> reporter: and there, under nc miller's name -- >> nc, and there's samuel. >> reporter: -- was samuel. >> look at that. it lists violet as his mother. >> reporter: it was the genealogy equivalent of a smoking gun. >> so this is proof that violet, sarah's mother, was enslaved by nc miller. >> yes. >> and this is absolute proof. >> this is absolute, definite proof. >> and you were able to tell karen -- >> that her ancestors, david and violet, we are enslaved at sharswood. that was tough.

>> so did you call fred? >> i did. i don't think he believed me in the beginning. >> i didn't believe her. >> so the connection suddenly is made with your family, slavery in this house, and you own it. >> once i realized it was my blood that was here, it took on a whole new meaning for me. it really saddens me sometimes when i -- and i'm up a lot of times wee hours of the night thinking about what happened here. >> reporter: as news spread through the family, there was sadness. but that's not all there was. >> i almost feel like i was losing my breath for a moment. it was almost like a feeling of being found. this is where i started, and as black people, we don't always know where we started. >> so here we are, sitting in this house. >> i can't believe it.

that i'm in a plantation house, a plantation that my family was enslaved. >> you're laughing as if this cannot be true. >> that's right. but it is. >> i felt complete. >> wow. >> i'm not half of a human being any more. they make me whole. even if i don't know them, i felt a connection to them at sharswood. >> i touched the tree, i hugged the tree. and i said oh, my god, you was here when my ancestors were here. i wonder which ancestor of mine touched the tree. i didn't know what to say or do, i just hugged the tree and felt like, i'm home. >> reporter: he shared the news with bill thompson, who had had that hunch all those years ago.

>> i look at it that i've been a servant to this farm, and this house my whole life. and for the miller family to come back home to my home, our home -- >> absolutely. >> it's great. it's a celebration of coming home. >> you never heard anything like this? >> yeah. >> a number of plantation properties like mt. vernon and monticello, have established relationships with the descendants of the slaves there. but to see those descendants come to own that plantation property, wow. >> this is god. this is where we're supposed to be. it's like a full circle, like it was meant to happen. to me, it was like it was meant to happen. >> reporter: the millers also see the hand of their ancestors in all of this. >> i think there had to be. i did everything in my power to not make it happen. i tried to mess it up at every

angle. >> reporter: but those ancestors had one more surprise in store, with all the revelations, there was one question that continued to gnaw at dexter, where were his enslaved ancestors buried? so just this winter, he asked bill. >> i said bill, there's one question that's been bothering me, where is the slave cemetery? he said dexter, it's right over there. i said right over where? he said, you see those trees over there? >> did you just go right up there? >> we went right up there. >> reporter: the trees just beyond fred's property, sure didn't look like a cemetery. that is, until you start to look closely. >> is that one of them? >> that's one of them right there. >> oh, my gosh. >> maybe this is a foot stone on the other end. >> oh, yeah.

>> reporter: poking up through the leaves all around us were pointed rocks. some small, some medium sized. no names, no engraving. just plain, anonymous markers of many, many lives. >> wow. this is astonishing. >> it is. >> kind of overwhelming, isn't it? >> it really is. >> i mean, we all live in the same area. we come past this place and we would not know that our ancestors were right there beside us the entire time. >> fred, if you hadn't bought that house -- >> right, right. >> we would never know. >> never. >> how has all of this affected you? >> it's changed me. it's definitely changed me. >> you ever angry? >> i get a little bit upset sometimes when i find out things i should have known already. >> angry at yourself?

>> at myself and the system. i think we should have known more. >> what about the school system? >> should have known more. >> family? >> should have known more, absolutely. >> you want the story of slavery told. >> i want the story of slavery told. it's important. this was converted from a door to a window. >> reporter: fred wants to do whatever's necessary to preserve the slave house. >> this has been exposed for 200 years. >> reporter: he's in the process of setting up a non-profit to make that possible. >> that's important for me, too. the emphasis is on that big white house. this is near and dear to me. this is the story. one, two, three, four, five, there's eight right here. >> reporter: and he's been thinking about the cemetery, too. >> i can't imagine this being someone young. >> we have to do something about this. >> yeah. have to. and i will. i'm going to fix it.

>> do you think you might allow historians to come -- >> absolutely. this place will be open to anyone who wants to learn. >> anyone? >> anyone can come here. >> reporter: but for now, sharswood is serving the purpose fred bought it for in the first place, gathering the miller family together in celebration. ♪ happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ happy birthday, happy birthday to you ♪ >> what do you think violet and david would think if they saw you owned this place? >> i'm hoping they would be proud of us, and i think they would be. they endured a lot. i can't imagine what they went through. looking down on us now, they must be smiling at us.

>> reporter: since our story first aired, the millers have discovered even more relatives descended from violet and david miller. earlier this month, several hundred family members gathered at sharswood for a family reunion. >> watch the millers visit the sharswood slave cemetery for the first time. >> some of them right here. at 60minutesovertime.com.

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what's the difference between prop 26 and prop 27? 26? not one dime to get people off the streets and into housing 27 generates hundreds of million to help solve homelessness. the choice is clear yes on prop 27.

what's the difference between prop 26 and prop 27? 26 is a money grab that doesn't guarantee a cent for non-gaming tribes. 27 requires 15% of all state revenues go to non-gaming tribes. the choice is clear. yes, on 27. i'm bill whitaker. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes." g the choices they make. like the shot they take.

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♪ >> announcer: previously on "big brother" -- first came the pound alliance. >> yes, sir. >> oh, baby. >> announcer: which grew into the dominant leftovers alliance. >> it's time for the leftovers to take over. >> announcer: with the game split in two -- >> this is something that's never been done before. this is going to be intense. >> -- four of the leftovers were running the show at big brochella. >> i have decided not to use the power veto. >> and jasmine was the easy target. >> our plan is to evict jasmine. >> meanwhile, kyle outed the leftovers.