After growing up in one of Atlanta’s poorest housing projects, George Washington Jonson enlists in the U.S. Army and finds some relief serving abroad. When events lead him back home, he joins the police force. It’s 1992, and Jonson is patrolling the streets he grew up on alongside his new partner, a shady legacy cop and self-described “redneck” who takes Jonson under his wing. After a decade on the job, Jonson has fashioned a new life in an affluent suburb with his white wife and stepson, though he is still policing his old neighborhood and is now tasked with training hot-headed rookie recruits. One night on patrol, a split-second confrontation with a white teenager takes a violent turn. That single gunshot sets into motion a series of escalating lies.

UC Berkley freshman D’aron Davenport is uncertain about his place until one disastrous party brings him three idiosyncratic best friends. But everything changes in the group’s alternative history class when D’aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, recently rebranded “Patriot Days.” His announcement is met with righteous indignation and inspires one of his friends to suggest a “performative intervention” to protest the reenactment.