New thread: Before the slave trade — the civilizations, kingdoms, and intellectual traditions that were deliberately destroyed.

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Sources & Methodology

Every claim. Every source. Visible.

We don't ask you to trust us. Every factual claim on Chain links to a primary source, government record, or peer-reviewed scholarship. Browse the full list below, organized by thread.

340+
Primary sources
5
Threads covered
12
Corrections logged
0
Silent edits
How we source claims
1
Primary source citation only. Every factual claim links to a government document, census record, court decision, or peer-reviewed academic publication — not secondary media coverage of that material.
2
Causal mechanism, not correlation. We only assert causal links established in the scholarship. Phrases like "contributed to," "made possible," and "directly caused" are used with precision, not interchangeably.
3
Scholarly consensus review. Thread content is reviewed against major works in each field before publication and updated when the scholarship is revised or meaningfully contested.
4
Explicit corrections. When we are wrong, we correct it visibly, explain what changed, and log it below. No silent edits. Ever.
5
Present-day data from primary datasets. All statistics cite the underlying dataset — Census Bureau, Federal Reserve SCF, CDC WONDER, NCRC — not news articles reporting on that data.
Thread

Housing & Wealth Gap

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Gov
Home Owners' Loan Corporation Security Maps, 1935–1940
National Archives · Record Group 195 · Washington, D.C.
The original HOLC neighborhood appraisal maps showing A–D grade assignments. Used to document which neighborhoods were graded D ("Hazardous") and the racial composition criteria used.
Book
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein · Liveright, 2017 · ISBN 978-1631492853
Definitive account of federal, state, and local government policies that explicitly segregated American neighborhoods. Primary source for the HOLC–FHA–GI Bill causal chain.
Gov
FHA Underwriting Manual, 1938 Edition
Federal Housing Administration · U.S. Government Printing Office · 1938
Contains the explicit racial covenants and "inharmonious racial groups" language used to deny FHA mortgage insurance in Black neighborhoods.
Data
Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022
Federal Reserve Board · Published October 2023
Source for present-day racial wealth gap figures. White median family wealth: $285,000. Black median family wealth: $44,900. Ratio: 6.3:1.
Data
Homeownership Rate by Race, 2024 Q1
U.S. Census Bureau · Housing Vacancies and Homeownership Survey · 2024
White homeownership rate: 74.3%. Black homeownership rate: 45.7%. Gap of 28.6 percentage points — wider than the 27-point gap recorded in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act passed.
Journal
Redlining Revisited: Mortgage Lending Patterns in Sacramento, 1930–2004
Gregory Squires et al. · Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 41(2) · 2005
Longitudinal study documenting the persistence of mortgage lending disparities in formerly redlined neighborhoods across seven decades.
Primary
Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill), Pub. L. 78-346
78th U.S. Congress · June 22, 1944
Original legislation. Used alongside FHA Underwriting Manual and NAACP records to document Black veterans' exclusion from home loan and education benefits.
Book
When Affirmative Action Was White
Ira Katznelson · W.W. Norton, 2005 · ISBN 978-0393328516
Documents how New Deal and WWII-era federal programs were designed and administered to exclude Black Americans, building the white middle class while blocking Black wealth accumulation.
Thread

Stolen Labor: From Slavery to Wage Theft

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Book
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Edward Baptist · Basic Books, 2014 · ISBN 978-0465049660
Documents the economic scale of enslaved labor and its centrality to American industrial capitalism, using plantation records, slave narratives, and financial records.
Data
Slave Voyages Database (Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database)
SlaveVoyages.org · Emory University · Last updated 2023
Comprehensive database of 36,000+ documented slaving voyages, 12.5M+ enslaved people. Source for all transatlantic slave trade volume figures.
Primary
The Black Codes of Mississippi, 1865
Mississippi Legislature · November 1865
Original statutes. Used to document the immediate post-emancipation re-imposition of forced labor through vagrancy laws, apprenticeship codes, and anti-enticement laws.
Book
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Douglas Blackmon · Doubleday, 2008 · ISBN 978-0385722704
Pulitzer Prize–winning account of convict leasing, debt peonage, and forced labor systems that functionally re-enslaved Black Americans after emancipation.
Journal
The Wage Gap Between Black and White Workers, 1979–2021
Economic Policy Institute · State of Working America Data Library · 2022
Documents persistent Black–white wage gap of ~20% controlling for education and experience. Used for present-day labor outcome data.
Thread

Mass Incarceration

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Book
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander · The New Press, 2010 · ISBN 978-1595581037
Primary scholarly source for the mass incarceration thread's causal argument tracing Black Codes → Jim Crow → War on Drugs → modern carceral system.
Data
Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables
Bureau of Justice Statistics · NCJ 307149 · November 2023
Source for Black incarceration rates. Black imprisonment rate: 1,240 per 100,000. White rate: 222 per 100,000. Ratio: 5.6:1.
Primary
Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Pub. L. 99-570
99th U.S. Congress · October 27, 1986
Established 100:1 crack-to-powder cocaine sentencing disparity. Reduced to 18:1 by the Fair Sentencing Act (2010). Primary source for drug war sentencing disparities.
Journal
Racial Disparities in Prosecutorial Declinations
RJ Vogelstein & Ram Subramanian · Brennan Center for Justice · 2021
Documents how prosecutorial discretion at every stage of the criminal legal process compounds racial disparities in incarceration outcomes.
Thread

Health Disparities

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Data
Health, United States, 2020–2021 — With Special Feature on Death
CDC National Center for Health Statistics · DHHS Publication No. 2022-1232 · 2022
Source for Black–white life expectancy gap, infant mortality differential, and age-adjusted mortality rates by race for major causes of death.
Journal
Structural Racism and Health Inequities in the USA: Evidence and Interventions
Bailey et al. · The Lancet, Vol. 389(10077) · 2017
Establishes causal mechanisms between structural racism — residential segregation, environmental racism, unequal healthcare access — and measurable health outcome disparities.
Journal
Racism as a Determinant of Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Paradies et al. · PLOS ONE, 10(9) · 2015
Meta-analysis of 293 studies documenting independent effects of racism on mental and physical health outcomes.
Data
Environmental Justice Screening Tool (EJScreen) Data, 2023
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency · Version 2.2 · 2023
Mapping data showing disproportionate concentration of environmental hazards (superfund sites, air pollution, lead paint) in formerly redlined Black neighborhoods.
Corrections log

Every error we've made — and fixed

When we are wrong, we say so publicly. No silent edits. The original claim, the correction, and the source are all listed here.

Corrected March 14, 2025 Housing & Wealth Gap

Claim about homeownership gap:
Was: The homeownership gap between Black and white Americans is smaller today than in 1968.
Now: The homeownership gap is wider today (28.6 pts) than when the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968 (27 pts).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Vacancies and Homeownership Survey 2024; Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit, 2019.

Corrected January 8, 2025 Stolen Labor

Figure for enslaved people transported:
Was: Approximately 10 million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas.
Now: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database documents 12.5 million departures from Africa, of whom an estimated 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage.
Source: SlaveVoyages.org, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Emory University, 2023 edition.

Corrected November 2, 2024 Mass Incarceration

Crack/powder sentencing ratio:
Was: The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act established a 100:1 sentencing disparity that remains in effect today.
Now: The 100:1 disparity was reduced to 18:1 by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, made retroactive by the First Step Act of 2018. An 18:1 disparity remains — still racially disparate, but not 100:1.
Source: Fair Sentencing Act, Pub. L. 111-220 (2010); First Step Act, Pub. L. 115-391 (2018).