Am I hallucinating or was 30 Rock the show to do the “Blackmerican” joke? Like, I keep hearing that in Tracy Morgan’s voice, “Blackmerican.” Anyway, if you’re still mad about HBO’s planned new series, Confederate, I have some good news. Maybe. As it turns out, a group of black producers and writers are working on a series for Amazon called Black America (shoulda been Blackmerica). The idea behind it is sort of the anti-Confederate, wherein freed slaves got their reparations in the form of three states, and they formed their own country. Here are the basics, from Deadline:

Another alternate history drama series, which has been in the works at Amazon for over a year, also paints a reality where southern states have left the Union but takes a very different approach. Titled Black America, the drama hails from top feature producer Will Packer (Ride Along, Think Like A Man franchises, Straight Outta Compton) and Peabody-winning The Boondocks creator and Black Jesus co-creator Aaron McGruder.

[Black America] envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming “Big Neighbor,” both ally and foe, the United States. The past 150 years have been witness to military incursions, assassinations, regime change, coups, etc. Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance.

It was HBO’s announcement of Confederate this month that prompted the Black America team to reveal the project’s premise. “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,” Packer told Deadline.

As for the tone of the hourlong series, it’s “a drama, but it wouldn’t be Aaron McGruder without traces of his trademark sardonic wit,” Will Packer said. Black America creates the kind of utopia that has been on the minds of generations of black Americans for whom the series may have a sense of wish-fulfillment.

“It was something that was personally intriguing for me as a black American,” Packer said. “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. 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.”

That involves “bringing on the appropriate historians to make sure we are telling the story in an accurate and responsible way,” Packer said, noting that historians have been brought in as consultants on the project, working with the producers. Why is working with scholars on a fictional series set in present time so important? “Even though the story is set in contemporary society, not post-slavery, it relies on us being factually correct in telling the story of how we got to a contemporary society where you’ve got a sovereign country that is run by black Americans,” Packer said.

[From Deadline]

The Deadline article features a longer interview with Will Packer, and it sounds like they’ve been working on this for a while, before Confederate was a white supremacist gleam in HBO’s eye. I find the concept genuinely fascinating, but I do wonder if this would make a more interesting book? But if Amazon is paying, then why not do it as an hour-long series? It just feels like there’s so much backstory to get through, because that’s what interesting – I want to hear about what happened in Black America in the 20th century too.

Packer also spoke about Confederate, which is still facing widespread backlash and boycott threats. He declined to say something about the series in general, as it hasn’t even been made, but he did say that on a personal level, “the fact that there is the contemplation of contemporary slavery makes it something that I would not be a part of producing nor consuming. Slavery is far too real and far too painful, and we still see the manifestations of it today as a country for me to ever view that as a form of entertainment.”

This is Aaron McGruder:

Photos courtesy of WENN.