Land of the Free

America, 2031. The states have used the lesser known "national convention" path to pass the 28th Amendment: reparations for Black Americans. Thirty-nine states voted in favor of "two-eight", as it's generally called; eleven refused to ratify, mostly former Confederate members. Ensuing legislation provided Black Americans with subsidized mortgages (H.R.4021 - "The Blue Line Act"), monetary compensation for time served on lesser drug offenses (H.R.4028 - "The Freedom Act"), and most controversially, the ability to seek damages in state and local courts for documented instances of past racial violence (H.R.4032 - "Truth and Reconciliation Act").

Pursuant to H.R.4032 ("The Truth and Reconciliation Act"), Congress creates a department tasked with building markers and monuments to commemorate documented discrimination and acts of violence against Black Americans, North and South. These federally supported committees include historians empowered to scour local archives and previously recorded history to accurately report and locate acts of past discrimination. Their popularity is high in states who ratified the amendment, abysmal in those states who refused. After several riots and one high-profile killing, U.S. Marshalls are attached to every "truth teller" commission that enters a state who refused to ratify. Local resentment remains, and many markers and monument are defaced once constructed.

But when a federal commission sends a two-person team to a rural Indiana community to commemorate a 1951 segregation murder, the integrity of this public confession is tested. While documenting one murder, the historians uncover a crime at the molten core of the reparations movement. And when the wrongdoings implicate not just the residents, but the State's Constitutional Delegate, a choice will be made on how much one community will sacrifice to redeem the past.