Cotton magnates directly sponsored and financed Agassiz’s polygenist lectures

Evidence

I also learned from Mark’s research that Agassiz was first brought to the United States in 1846 by the cotton milling and textile magnate John Amory Lowell, who sponsored the Swiss “scientist” to give twenty-four lectures over a two-year period in which he begins to spread his theories of his “white supremacist, unapologetically slavery-friendly hypothesis based on ostensibly innate intellectual and capacitive differences between ‘the races.’ ” Mark’s research was groundbreaking: I did not realize just how pervasive Agassiz’s theories were-and still are. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 822

Categorization

• QUESTION: The direct sponsorship link between Lowell /cotton wealth and Agassiz’s arrival makes the institutional chain concrete — worth tying back to the chapter where the photos were taken.