Agassiz commissioned daguerreotypes of seven enslaved people in 1850
Evidence
In 1850, to support his theory that Africans descended from a different “zone of creation” than Europeans, and thus were essentially inferior, Agassiz commissioned daguerreotypes of [seven] enslaved people living in South Carolina, [two of whom were] Renty and Delia. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 890
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Core factual anchor for the reader’s stated goal on the property-law afterlife of slavery — the images themselves are the contested object.
Related
- Agassiz commissioned the Renty and Delia daguerreotypes in 1850 to support polygenism (similarity 0.92)
- Agassiz commissioned slave daguerreotypes in 1850 to prove whites were a separate superior species. (similarity 0.86)
- Agassiz commissioned the photos of enslaved people as evidence of racial inferiority (similarity 0.86)
- The daguerreotypes were among the first photos ever taken of enslaved people (similarity 0.84)
- Racist daguerreotypes ironically immortalized the enslaved people they demeaned (similarity 0.83)
- The 1850 daguerreotypes were produced to prove white racial superiority. (similarity 0.83)
- Agassiz photographed enslaved people as specimens to prove their subhumanity (similarity 0.82)
- Lanier identified Renty and Delia as her ancestors through census records (similarity 0.82)
- Agassiz cataloged enslaved people like zoological specimens for polygenesis research (similarity 0.82)
- Lanier’s 2011 letter to Faust framed the daguerreotypes as evidence of slavery’s evils. (similarity 0.81)
- Agassiz cataloged enslaved people’s photos the same way he cataloged animal species (similarity 0.81)
- Agassiz sought African-born slaves in South Carolina as evidence for polygenesis (similarity 0.81)
- Concrete evidence of enslavement transforms abstract ancestral pain into groundable proof (similarity 0.80)
- Providing enslaved people to Agassiz promoted slavery rather than proving racial inferiority. (similarity 0.80)
- The 1850 slave daguerreotypes were photography’s first racial-profiling documents (similarity 0.80)