Wells Fargo (Wachovia)

The money trail here runs straight from slavery into the subprime era. In 2005, Wachovia disclosed that two of its predecessor institutions, the Bank of Charleston and the Georgia Railroad & Banking Company, were entangled with slavery: the Bank of Charleston accepted at least 529 enslaved people as loan collateral (taking ownership when borrowers defaulted), and the Georgia Railroad used at least 162 enslaved laborers to build its line. Wachovia apologized.

Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia in 2008. Four years later, in 2012, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $175 million to settle Justice Department claims that it had steered Black and Hispanic borrowers into costlier subprime mortgages and charged them higher fees than comparable white borrowers, one of the largest fair-lending settlements ever (see predatory-lending). The same institution that profited from enslaved collateral in the 1850s was found, a century and a half later, extracting a premium from Black borrowers again.