Enslavers itemized human beings to the quarter-inch in compensation petitions.

Evidence

Margaret Barber’s petition was one of the most precise—“Where other owners measured their people in inches, she did so in quarter-inches.” She described those she enslaved, ranging in age from four months to sixty-five years, in detached detail and included information such as their name, sex, color, and height along with their “work” experience. She even included a request for $100 for Samuel Yates, age twenty-four, described as a “dark mulatto” at 5 feet 2½ inches tall, a “house servant” who was “deformed, having a curved spine.” The government awarded her no money for Samuel. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 79

Categorization

• SHARE: Someone working on the dehumanizing exactitude of chattel inventories or on valuation regimes would appreciate the quarter-inch detail and the denied claim for the deformed Samuel Yates.