Amazon’s newly announced series Black America — an alternate history resulting from a different outcome of the American Civil War — is at once very similar to and wildly different from HBO’s embattled Confederate. 

Hailing from Peabody winner Aaron McGruder (The Boondocks) and Will Packer (who’s produced everything from Straight Outta Compton to Girls Trip to the recent remake of Roots), Black America takes place in a world where the North won the Civil War, but the process of Reconstruction resulted in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama being given to freed slaves, who formed their own nation, New Colonia. (According to Deadline, the series originated from an idea from Amazon head of content Roy Price.)

The series takes place in the present day, but in an alternate world where the gigantic United States and the smaller New Colonia continue to explore their sometimes-fractious relationship. In an interview with Deadline announcing the project, Packer discussed it in terms of an alt-universe black utopia.