Two new cable dramas will shine a light on two historical events revolving around racism and prejudice that have for the most part remained in the shadows of American history.

HBO’s Watchmen, which debuts this fall, is set in an alternative universe in which police officers wear masks to protect their identities against a group of white supremacists seeking to kill them. The series takes place in 2019 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where nearly 100 years earlier an angry white mob terrorized black homeowners and destroyed businesses in a thriving area known as Black Wall Street in arguably one of the worst occurrences of racial violence in American history.

Watchmen series creator Damon Lindelof said during the recent Television Critics Association press tour that reading about the Tulsa race riot in author Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2014 essay The Case for Reparations gave him the idea to use the city as a symbolic launching pad to tackle the subjects of race, prejudice and law enforcement in his version of Watchmen, which is inspired by the classic 1980s graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

“That was the first time that I heard about Black Wall Street and what happened in Tulsa in ’21 … that was the beginning of my education,” said Lindelof. “When I started thinking about what Watchmen was going to be and trying to think about the original source material, the book was highly political ... it was about what was happening in American culture at the time. What in 2019 is the equivalent of the nuclear standoff between the Russians and the United States? It just felt like it was undeniably race and policing in America.”

AMC’s horror anthology series The Terror: Infamy -- premiering Aug. 12 -- bases its storyline around the true-life relocation of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans from their homes into internment camps during World War II after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The series, created and produced by Alexander Woo (True Blood), prominently features Asian-Americans both in front of and behind the camera, including 82-year old actor George Takei of Star Trek fame who experienced life at an internment camp first hand. Takei, who was five-years old when his family was incarcerated, said the series's inclusion of a supernatural entity derived from vintage Japanese ghost stories -- or kaidan -- that ultimately terrorizes the inhabitants of the internment camps, helps to highlight the real horror stories of racial prejudice and imprisonment experienced by interned Japanese Americans in the 1940s.

“It was a harrowing experience, but the kaidan adds to the intensifying of that story,” said Takei. “I hope The Terror: Infamy will remind people that [racism] is still existing today. What we have is this endless cycle, the repetition of this kind of horror and injustice being inflicted on minority people. And we see it again today on our southern borders.”

Indeed, the two series serve as a creative spotlight in which fiction brings to light dark periods in American history.

George Takei, the Japanese-American actor and activist who portrayed Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series, has launched a Care2 petition supporting Muslims in response to President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to suspend immigration from "terror-prone regions."

Takei's family was among those placed in internment camps by the U.S. government during World War II; he was just five years old at the time.

The petition comes in advance of Wednesday's Hill hearing on Trump's nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, John Kelly.

Citing the internment of innocent Japanese-Americans, Takei said: “It starts with a registry, with restrictions, with irrationally ascribed guilt, and with fear. But we know well where it might lead. National security must never again be permitted to justify wholesale denial of constitutional rights and protections."

At press time the petition had more than 43,000 signatures with a goal of 45,000.

In an e-mail to supporters this week, Trump asked for input on his planned priorities as president, which include "Suspend immigration from regions compromised by terrorism and where vetting cannot safely occur."

The full text of Takei's petition follows:

When I was just 5, my family was rounded up at gunpoint and forced from our home in Los Angeles into an internment camp. We were prisoners in our own country, held within barbed wire compounds, armed guards pointing guns down at us. It was an egregious violation of our rights under the U.S. Constitution, all in the name of "security.” During that time, fear and racism drove government policy, creating a living hell for over 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens. 

I have spent my life trying to ensure something like this never happens again. But dark clouds once more are gathering. A Trump spokesperson recently stated the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II "sets a precedent" for Trump to do the same today. And Trump continues to stand by his plans to establish a Muslim registry and ban immigrants from “certain” Muslim countries from the U.S. It starts with a registry, with restrictions, with irrationally ascribed guilt, and with fear. But we know well where it might lead.

National security must never again be permitted to justify wholesale denial of constitutional rights and protections. If it is freedom and our way of life that we fight for, our first obligation is to ensure that our own government adheres to those principles. Without that, we are no better than our enemies.

Please sign this petition to let the Muslim community know you support them and oppose any policy targeting them based on their religion or national origin. Help send a message to Trump and his ilk that this will never again happen in America.