Have you ever wondered what America would be like if Black people were given reparations for slavery? Well, a new Amazon series will explore just that.
Hot on the heals of HBO’s recent announcement about its upcoming series Confederate, Deadline reports that Amazon is developing an alt-history series of its own. Black America is currently in development with Girls Trip’s Will Packer and The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder behind it.
The Amazon series will focus on a reality where the southern states have left the Union, but freed African-Americans have secured Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi as reparations for slavery, forming a sovereign nation called New Colonia.
Black America is in stark contrast to HBO’s recently announced Confederate, a show from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, which imagines a world where slavery still exists.
Deadline announced the Amazon project earlier this year, but few details were known. However, following HBO’s announcement the Black America team felt it was important to announce the series as soon as possible.
Packer told Deadline, “It felt this was the appropriate time to make sure that audiences and the creative community knew that there was a project that preexisted and we are pretty far down the road with it.”
And, while the series is set to be a drama, McGruder’s trademark sardonic wit will be present.
“You would be hard pressed to find many black Americans who have not thought about the concept of reparation, what would happen if reparations were actually given,” said Packer. “As a content creator, the fact that that is something that has been discussed thoroughly throughout various demographics of people in this country but yet never been explored to my knowledge in any real way in long-form content, I thought it was a tremendous opportunity to delve into the story, to do it right.”