Agassiz cataloged enslaved people like zoological specimens for polygenesis research

Evidence

“In 1850, Agassiz traveled to a South Carolina plantation to gather evidence for polygenesis. He observed enslaved workers there and long after his return to Cambridge he studied portraits taken of five of the men and two of the women. Agassiz classified and cataloged those men and women by their physical characteristics in much the same way that he classified and cataloged species of animals earlier in his career.” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 606

Categorization

• XREF: The imaging and cataloging of enslaved people as specimens connects to broader research on how colonial scientific archives were built.