About Chain
Understand the chain,
not just the event.
Chain is a free, independent digital history platform. We trace African and Black history through causal threads — connecting sovereign African civilizations, the slave trade, Reconstruction, federal policy, and present-day America into a single, legible chain of cause and consequence.
Our mission
History as a chain, not a list of facts
Most history education presents the past as a sequence of disconnected events — dates, names, battles, laws. Chain was built on a different premise: that history is a chain of cause and consequence, and that you cannot understand where you are without tracing the links that got you here.
We focus specifically on African and Black history, because it is the history most systematically excluded from American civic education and most directly relevant to understanding present-day inequalities in housing, wealth, health, education, and the justice system. We believe that understanding the full chain — from Mansa Musa's Mali to the 2024 racial wealth gap — is not optional context. It is the only way to understand the country accurately.
"The thing about being Black in America is that the history isn't past. It's infrastructure."
— Chain editorial principle
Chain is free. It has no paywall, no premium tier, and no advertising. We believe the people who most need access to this history — students in underfunded schools, community organizers, families trying to understand their own story — should never have to pay for it.
Why causal history
Why "the chain" matters
Consider redlining. In 1933, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation graded American neighborhoods A through D. Black neighborhoods — regardless of their actual condition — were graded D. Banks used those maps to deny FHA-backed mortgages. The GI Bill of 1944 built the white middle class with home equity that Black veterans couldn't access. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited new discrimination but couldn't undo 35 years of accumulated wealth exclusion. Today, the racial homeownership gap is wider than it was in 1968.
None of those facts, stated in isolation, explain the present. The chain does. Chain's threads make that causality explicit at every step — not as interpretation, but as documented policy with documented consequences.
Causality requires precision. We distinguish between correlation and documented causal mechanisms. We cite primary sources — the actual HOLC maps, the FHA underwriting manuals, the Census data — rather than asserting chains that haven't been established in the scholarship.
How we work
Methodology
Every claim on Chain meets the following standards:
Our full source list, organized by thread and encyclopedia entry, is available at sources.html. If you believe a claim is incorrect or a source is misrepresented, please contact us — we investigate every substantive challenge.
Funding & independence
No institutional strings
Chain has no institutional funders, no corporate sponsors, and no advertisers. Our only revenue comes from voluntary reader donations — people who believe this history should be free and accurate and choose to support that.
This is a deliberate choice. Institutional funding — from foundations, universities, or government agencies — typically comes with implicit or explicit constraints on the claims that can be made, the people who can be named, or the policies that can be criticized. We believe honest causal history of racism in America is incompatible with those constraints.
We are fiscally sponsored through a registered 501(c)(3) organization, which means donations are tax-deductible. No funder has ever had any influence over editorial content. If that ever changes, we will say so publicly and return the funding.
Our annual financial transparency report is published each January. It details every revenue source and every expenditure. If you have questions about our funding, contact us.
Access & equity
Free. Permanently.
Chain will never put content behind a paywall. This is not a marketing position — it is a commitment embedded in how we are structured. The communities that most need this history are the ones with the least access to paid content: underfunded schools, public libraries, community organizations in historically redlined neighborhoods.
All Chain content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — free to use, share, reproduce, and adapt with attribution. Educators can use any Chain content in their classrooms without permission or payment. Journalists can quote it freely. Community organizations can reproduce it in full.
We actively build teaching resources — lesson plans, discussion guides, and primary source materials — specifically designed for use in under-resourced classrooms where this history is most likely to be absent from the standard curriculum.
"The paywall is a political choice. We made the opposite one."
— Chain founding principle
The people behind Chain
Who we are
Chain was built by writers, historians, educators, and designers who believe this history is too important to be locked behind paywalls or watered down by institutional interests.
Our editorial team includes historians specializing in African diaspora, American legal history, and post-Reconstruction policy. All thread content is researched and written by subject-matter specialists, not generalists.
A network of K–12 and university educators reviews teaching resources for accuracy, grade-appropriateness, and alignment with state standards. Our educator advisors include classroom teachers from Atlanta, Chicago, and Oakland.
Chain is designed to be fast, readable, and accessible. We prioritize WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, keyboard navigation, and performance on low-bandwidth connections — because many of our readers are in schools with poor infrastructure.
What we believe
Six principles we don't compromise on
The past doesn't just inform the present — it directly produces it. We treat causal chains as real, documented mechanisms, not metaphors.
This history belongs to everyone. Restricting it to those who can pay is a political act. We chose the opposite.
Every assertion links to evidence. We do not ask readers to trust us — we ask them to check the source.
We accept no funding that comes with restrictions on what we can say, who we can name, or which policies we can criticize.
When we are wrong, we say so clearly, explain the correction, and log what changed. No silent edits.
We write for — not about — Black Americans. This isn't academic history written for scholars. It's made for students, families, and communities.
History this important
should be free.
Chain is reader-funded and always will be. Support the work — or just start reading. Both are welcome.