skull-bearer:

glamourweaver:

Here’s an alternate history setting I haven’t seen before – General Sherman’s orders weren’t rescinded and every freed family received 12 acres and a mule carved from the lands of rebel slave holders.  Southern blacks were never bound to the repressive sharecropping system, and instead were as able to economically progress as the whites who benefited from the homestead act.  The facilitates an alternate present that is far more socially and scientifically advanced as the backdrop for science fiction stories – and makes a much stronger and more cutting statement about institutional racism than “man, things would sure be worse if the Confederacy and 19th century style slavery still existed!”.

Hell – it liberates you to present a world where the United States can be unambiguous good-guys, but rather than white washing reality, it is a criticism of the reality by juxtaposition!

I love it. Someone should do an anthology of ‘what if history wasn’t so shit’ Alternate History short stories.