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Description
Boy, I'm gonna get some fun comments on this one, yessiree.
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To describe the history of the Confederate States of America and the Black Republic of New Africa as "complicated" would be criminally understating the issue.

In order to really describe what you need to know to start off, the CSA was the last nation in North America (and indeed, the last major nation in the developed world) to outlaw slavery, taking until 1905 to do so. Even with this, though, Afro-Confederates were not given citizenship, and instead labeled as "Residents" of the CSA. In many ways, their treatment was identical to before abolition. And naturally, when the First World War began to strain the CSA to the limits of its capacity, the Afro-Confederates took the opportunity to rise in rebellion, inspired by the works of not only Abraham Lincoln, but Karl Marx and lately, Vladimir Lenin. This "Red Rebellion" (or Black Rebellion, depending on who you ask) had many horrors inflicted by both the rebels and the Confederates that are too graphic and obscene to describe here, but it was unable to destroy the CSA entirely. It did, however, achieve the creation of a new country, the "Black Republic of New Africa", which established itself as a communist dictatorship almost immediately. This nation was also the subject of the "Great Migration", where Afro-Confederates moved into New Africa while Anglo-Confederates moved to the remainder of the CSA, the largest one-time demographic shift in the history of North America.

For years, this small nation was boxed in by hostile neighbors who were unwilling to attack it for fear of the retaliation. Despite absorbing the Anglo-Confederate population from what was now New Africa, the CSA had suffered a massive population loss in the Great Migration, which crippled its economy for decades afterwards and from which it arguably still hasn't recovered from. New Africa, meanwhile, languished under a communist dictatorship that was held together only by its charismatic leader, Marcus Fisher. The border between the CSA and New Africa was naturally one of the most militarized and guarded, with both the CSA and New Africa erecting a line of fortifications along their border to keep out any military incursions (as well as prevent people from escaping New Africa), creating a hard border that many took to calling the "Cotton Curtain".

The death of Fisher in 1963 saw the downward spiral of the New African into an outright military junta as the people began to increasingly call for reforms, then later the abolition of communism altogether. This was watched anxiously by the CSA, who had good cause to worry: in 1979, the situation deteriorated into an outright civil war, something that again, the North American Union was hesitant to intervene in. It took an accidental bombing of the small Confederate town of Abbotsford, Georgia in 1984 finally spurred the NAU into action, leading to the New African Intervention that saw NAU forces prop up anti-communist forces in the country, finally leading to the downfall of the communist regime later that same year. Symbolically, the Cotton Curtain was finally taken down.

In the years that followed, New Africa applied for and received NAU Membership, bringing its relations with the CSA from vaguely hostile to frosty. It did lead to a new economic reality, though. As New Africa liberalized and opened up its economy, many Confederate businesses moved their operations into New Africa to take advantage of industry regulations intentionally designed to be less restrictive to attract businesses, once again hobbling the CSA's economy through the 1980s and 1990s. Meanwhile, New Africa quickly prospered, growing and developing rapidly until it was on par with many other NAU economies by 2000, even seeing continuous growth through the Great Recession. Douglass, the capital and largest city (formerly Jackson, Mississippi) was consistently one of the fastest-growing NAU cities economically and demographically between 1985 and 2010. All the while, many in the CSA began to look at it resentfully, seeing their own economy's pattern of stagnation and recession and New Africa's economic ascendancy and giving many politicians the convenient tactic of blaming New Africa "stealing" jobs from the CSA (conveniently ignoring that most CSA businesses moving jobs to New Africa were doing so willingly and purposefully).

And here we arrive in the modern day. The CSA and New Africa are by no means friends. Neither nation wants to be friends. The deeply rooted scars of the legacy of the CSA's "peculiar institution" are still there, and there are many alive in New Africa today who still remember grandparents or great-grandparents who were born into slavery near the end of the CSA keeping slaves. Meanwhile, many in the CSA resent New Africa for "taking their jobs" and perpetually hobbling their country's economic growth, though many economists will just as readily say that again, the legacy of slavery holding back the CSA's economy still reverberates through to today, though this is a somewhat controversial stance. At best, it could be said that the two tolerate each other's existence. And at the very least, the Cotton Curtain has been mostly dismantled, with the remaining monuments standing more for New Africa's history of isolation and despotism than for any new friendship between it and its larger neighbor.

Description
Boy, I'm gonna get some fun comments on this one, yessiree.
---
To describe the history of the Confederate States of America and the Black Republic of New Africa as "complicated" would be criminally understating the issue.

In order to really describe what you need to know to start off, the CSA was the last nation in North America (and indeed, the last major nation in the developed world) to outlaw slavery, taking until 1905 to do so. Even with this, though, Afro-Confederates were not given citizenship, and instead labeled as "Residents" of the CSA. In many ways, their treatment was identical to before abolition. And naturally, when the First World War began to strain the CSA to the limits of its capacity, the Afro-Confederates took the opportunity to rise in rebellion, inspired by the works of not only Abraham Lincoln, but Karl Marx and lately, Vladimir Lenin. This "Red Rebellion" (or Black Rebellion, depending on who you ask) had many horrors inflicted by both the rebels and the Confederates that are too graphic and obscene to describe here, but it was unable to destroy the CSA entirely. It did, however, achieve the creation of a new country, the "Black Republic of New Africa", which established itself as a communist dictatorship almost immediately. This nation was also the subject of the "Great Migration", where Afro-Confederates moved into New Africa while Anglo-Confederates moved to the remainder of the CSA, the largest one-time demographic shift in the history of North America.

For years, this small nation was boxed in by hostile neighbors who were unwilling to attack it for fear of the retaliation. Despite absorbing the Anglo-Confederate population from what was now New Africa, the CSA had suffered a massive population loss in the Great Migration, which crippled its economy for decades afterwards and from which it arguably still hasn't recovered from. New Africa, meanwhile, languished under a communist dictatorship that was held together only by its charismatic leader, Marcus Fisher. The border between the CSA and New Africa was naturally one of the most militarized and guarded, with both the CSA and New Africa erecting a line of fortifications along their border to keep out any military incursions (as well as prevent people from escaping New Africa), creating a hard border that many took to calling the "Cotton Curtain".

The death of Fisher in 1963 saw the downward spiral of the New African into an outright military junta as the people began to increasingly call for reforms, then later the abolition of communism altogether. This was watched anxiously by the CSA, who had good cause to worry: in 1979, the situation deteriorated into an outright civil war, something that again, the North American Union was hesitant to intervene in. It took an accidental bombing of the small Confederate town of Abbotsford, Georgia in 1984 finally spurred the NAU into action, leading to the New African Intervention that saw NAU forces prop up anti-communist forces in the country, finally leading to the downfall of the communist regime later that same year. Symbolically, the Cotton Curtain was finally taken down.

In the years that followed, New Africa applied for and received NAU Membership, bringing its relations with the CSA from vaguely hostile to frosty. It did lead to a new economic reality, though. As New Africa liberalized and opened up its economy, many Confederate businesses moved their operations into New Africa to take advantage of industry regulations intentionally designed to be less restrictive to attract businesses, once again hobbling the CSA's economy through the 1980s and 1990s. Meanwhile, New Africa quickly prospered, growing and developing rapidly until it was on par with many other NAU economies by 2000, even seeing continuous growth through the Great Recession. Douglass, the capital and largest city (formerly Jackson, Mississippi) was consistently one of the fastest-growing NAU cities economically and demographically between 1985 and 2010. All the while, many in the CSA began to look at it resentfully, seeing their own economy's pattern of stagnation and recession and New Africa's economic ascendancy and giving many politicians the convenient tactic of blaming New Africa "stealing" jobs from the CSA (conveniently ignoring that most CSA businesses moving jobs to New Africa were doing so willingly and purposefully).

And here we arrive in the modern day. The CSA and New Africa are by no means friends. Neither nation wants to be friends. The deeply rooted scars of the legacy of the CSA's "peculiar institution" are still there, and there are many alive in New Africa today who still remember grandparents or great-grandparents who were born into slavery near the end of the CSA keeping slaves. Meanwhile, many in the CSA resent New Africa for "taking their jobs" and perpetually hobbling their country's economic growth, though many economists will just as readily say that again, the legacy of slavery holding back the CSA's economy still reverberates through to today, though this is a somewhat controversial stance. At best, it could be said that the two tolerate each other's existence. And at the very least, the Cotton Curtain has been mostly dismantled, with the remaining monuments standing more for New Africa's history of isolation and despotism than for any new friendship between it and its larger neighbor.