In planning out the TL, I’ve only got as far as naming some of the CSRs comprising the Combined Syndicates of America: a map of the CSA with each of the CSRs who have either been mentioned already or are intended to play some sort of role in the chapters I’ve planned out is set out below. It’ll be undoubtedly expanded upon as I get further.
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To an extent, the New Afrika and Gullah CSRs were a project which withered on the vine. With its roots in the Sharecropper’s Union’s uprising in early 1938 which essentially gifted the Chicago government control of most of the upper Mississippi at a crucial moment for the survival of the state, its actual implementation as a culturally-distinct and independent homeland for black Americans was hampered by the fact that by the time the borders of the CSRs were agreed in 1940, the most prominent black Syndicalists had either managed to get themselves killed (in the case of Oliver Law) or attached themselves to one of the several internal factions which were ultimately frozen out of the decision-making process (most obviously Ned Cobb and Harry Haywood). As a result, the Chicago Congress ended up drawing a line around the two most monolithically black areas of the CSA and establishing the New Afrika and Gullah CSRs as constituent republics of the CSA.
There was some population exchange, particularly between New Afrika and the newly-formed Gulfland CSR (established as a counterweight to New Afrika for white Southerners): while compensation was promised for any property left behind, this in practice took years to arrive, if ever: well into the 1960s this provided an active source of tension between the CSRs. While there was a genuine improvement in relations from the early 1970s onwards (driven in part by the unlikely but genuine friendship between Gulfland President George Wallace and New Afrika President Robert Lee Maupin) pretty much the only thing both CSRs have consistently agreed on is that one of them should own New Orleans (currently within the East Texas CSR, and one of the few cities of any size to have a roughly equal population of black and white Americans).
One of the biggest demographic changes from OTL is that the Second Great Migration never took place – while there was a ramp-up of production in the Steel Belt to support the Syndicalist war effort in Europe, this never reached the extent of the US in the Second World War. Additionally, the Chicago government was acutely aware that its power was ultimately derived from a network of dozens of mid-sized unions, and was happy to give workers a very wide degree of latitude in who they wanted to fill vacancies in the factories they controlled. Despite occasional faltering efforts to ensure some degree of openness, most unions, particularly in areas with significant white ethnic communities, ended up dominated by these communities: for example, even as late as 1992, it’s virtually impossible to get a job as a skilled labourer in several industries in Cleveland unless you’re identifiably Polish.
This, plus the secession of two of the whitest parts of America circa 1936, means that the black population of the CSA in the early 90s is about 25% of the total population, almost exclusively concentrated in the New Afrika and Gullah CSRs. The attempts of local government to construct a new unified identity for the inhabitants of the former, and deep folkloric interest in the customs of the latter, have meant that the two CSRs have inexorably diverged, to the point where “Negro” (the preferred ethnonym for black New Afrikans) and “Gullah” are seen as completely culturally distinct.
The CSA did enjoy genuine success in eradicating lynching in the South from the early 1940s onwards, and during the psychotherapeutic regime of William Sargant, “racism” was, strictly speaking, one of the things you could be lobotomised for. A well-disposed visitor to the New Afrika CSR in the early 90s could be forgiven for leaving with the general impression that the CSA has stamped out racial oppression, and vastly improved the lives of its Negro citizens – provided, of course, that he doesn’t ask too many pointed questions about relative HDIs of each of the CSRs, or exactly how many Negro and Gullah politicians have attained positions of genuine prominence on a national level.
In reality, the New Afrika CSR is, alongside the Appalachia CSR (the brainchild of a branch of Syndicalists who believed that the Appalachian people formed a distinct and historically oppressed ethnic group), one of the poorest in the CSA: the vast majority of its citizens are still essentially sharecroppers who have exchanged one master for another (and sharecroppers earning materially less by 1992 than they were by 1980 thanks to rampant inflation). It should be noted that the Gullah CSR’s ownership of Charleston and its port has made it significantly wealthier than the New Afrika CSR: as of 1992, Gullah President Clarence Thomas has begun to ally himself with the reformist faction of the Syndicalist Union Party.
The Gulf CSR has historically been somewhat more developed than the New Afrika CSR: recent discoveries of oil off its cost, however, will ensure that the two CSRs will have very different experiences of the collapse of the CSA. I’ve planned out a TL covering this period from their perspective (provisionally titled “When the Levee Breaks”) after the current TL is finished.
For reference, a map of the New Afrika and Gullah CSRs (taken from a children’s world atlas published in 1960) is reproduced below: