Editorial Standards — Black-History.com

Sourcing Standard

Every factual claim in our editorial content must be traceable to a primary or peer-reviewed secondary source. We do not treat secondary popular sources — Wikipedia, general encyclopedias, or aggregator websites — as authoritative. We use them as starting points and follow their citations to primary records.

For historical claims, we prefer primary sources: original documents, letters, court records, oral history archives, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, and institutional records. When we rely on secondary scholarship, we cite peer-reviewed journals and academic press books, not trade summaries.

Dates, names, and quantitative claims are verified against at least two independent sources where possible. When only one source exists and it is the most authoritative available, we note the limitation explicitly in the article.

Our sourcing standard: the rigor of a peer-reviewed journal, the readability of a great magazine. These are not in conflict. We are committed to both.

Fact-Checking Process

Every article published in Insights undergoes the following before publication:

01.
Claims inventory
Every verifiable factual claim is extracted and listed. This includes dates, statistics, names, quotations, and causal assertions.
02.
Source verification
Each claim is matched to its source. For quotations, we require the original text — not a paraphrase of it.
03.
Independent cross-check
High-stakes claims — casualty figures, legal outcomes, institutional data — are cross-checked against a second independent source.
04.
Editorial review
The founding editor reviews the final draft against the claims inventory before publication. No article publishes over unresolved flags.

This process adds time. We consider that a feature, not a cost. There is no publication schedule that overrides it.

Image Rights and Archival Photographs

The photographs we use in the Good Trouble archive and throughout the site are historical records. They are not decorative. We treat them with the seriousness that demands.

Before publishing any archival photograph, we:

→ Research the image's provenance and chain of custody
→ Identify the holding institution and determine copyright status
→ Obtain a license or confirm public domain / fair use basis
→ Write contextual captions that name the subject, date, place, and institution
→ Provide meaningful alt text that describes the image to readers using assistive technology

Where image rights have not yet been cleared, we use placeholder graphics. We do not substitute stock imagery for historical photographs — a stock photo of a person in period dress is not a substitute for the historical record. When the real image is not yet available, we say so.

Artificial Intelligence Policy

We use AI tools in limited, defined ways. We do not use AI to write or substantially draft editorial content. All Insights essays, HBCU Wiki entries, and Good Trouble profiles are written by human editors.

AI tools are used for:

→ Research assistance — identifying primary sources, locating archive holdings, surfacing scholarship
→ Accessibility — generating initial alt text drafts for review and revision by editors
→ Structural tasks — formatting, HTML/CSS, site infrastructure

AI tools are never used for:

→ Writing or substantially drafting editorial content presented as human-authored
→ Generating or fabricating historical claims or quotations
→ Replacing the human fact-checking process described above

This policy will evolve as the technology evolves. We will update it when it does.

Corrections Policy

We make mistakes. When we do, we correct them promptly, visibly, and without erasure.

What we correct: factual errors — incorrect dates, misspelled names, wrong statistics, false attributions. We also correct errors of omission where a missing fact materially changes the meaning of a claim.

What we do not retract: analytical conclusions, editorial judgments, or assessments that are disputed but not demonstrably false. If you believe our analysis is wrong, we welcome the argument — but a correction is not appropriate for a conclusion you disagree with. We will note significant disagreements if they come from credentialed sources.

How corrections are issued: Corrections are appended to the original article with a date stamp and a plain-language description of what was changed. They are also posted to the public corrections log. We do not quietly edit articles without noting the change.

To submit a correction, use the form on our contact page.

Editorial Independence

Black-History.com is editorially independent. No advertiser, donor, institutional partner, or subscriber has any influence over what we publish, how we cover topics, or what conclusions we reach. This is not a policy statement — it is a structural fact. We have no advertisers. We have no sponsors. Our subscription model depends on reader trust, which means that the moment we compromise editorial independence, we have destroyed the product.

Donors to the Black History Educational Foundation do not receive editorial influence. Institutional partners do not receive positive coverage in exchange for support. HBCU partnerships provide archival access — not editorial control over how an institution is described.

We may quote or excerpt HBCU institutional communications in their own voice — labeled as such — but our independent assessment of any institution is never conditioned on that institution's support.

HBCU Wiki Standards

The HBCU Wiki aspires to be the definitive reference for every Historically Black College and University — active, closed, and consolidated. Each entry must meet the following standards:

→ Founding date and founding circumstances sourced to primary institutional records where accessible
→ Accreditation status verified against the current SACSCOC or applicable regional accreditor registry
→ Notable alumni documented with independent source confirmation (not solely institutional press releases)
→ Closures, mergers, and consolidations documented with historical context and outcome
→ All entries marked with a research status indicator (Active / In Research) so readers know what has been verified

Entries marked "In Research" contain known facts but have not completed the full verification process. They are published because partial information is better than no information — but they are clearly labeled. When research is complete, the status updates to "Active" and the completion date is noted.

These editorial standards were last reviewed and updated: May 2026. Questions? Contact us.