The story is based on the very real history of black Americans still being enslaved even after the Emancipation Proclamation. The most prominent example of this, on which the movie is based, is the life of Mae Louise Walls Miller. She didn't get her freedom until 1961, when she ran away from the plantation and found a family that rescued her and her family. She and her family were unaware that things had changed, as they had no TV or other access to the outside world; they just assumed their situation was like that for all black people.
[After end credits] DEDICATION: "Dedicated to the African Americans who remained enslaved during the Twentieth Century and to those who remain oppressed world-wide."
The publicity for the film states that Alice (2022) was "inspired by the true events of a woman of servitude in 1800s Georgia, who escapes the 55-acre confines of her captor to discover the shocking reality that exists beyond the tree line ... it's 1973." Elements of the film's background are loosely based on the narrative of Mae Louise Miller, who escaped from slavery in the 1960s.
Keke Palmer and Gaius Charles have also acted together in an episode (We Gotta Get Out of This Place (2014)) of Grey's Anatomy (2005). Keke Palmer being a young teen parent with a heart condition trying to convince Gaius Charles to let her in on a medical trial.