Slave inventories listed human beings with dollar valuations alongside livestock.

Evidence

There were three columns of names, each followed by a number that I quickly surmised was their worth in dollars. On the right, my eyes were immediately drawn to the name Renty, written with a big loop on the R, proof that he existed. And next to it the number 300. I felt ill—the inhumanity of placing a value on a person’s life. What would that mean to put a dollar amount on my life? This was another example of Black people being reduced to chattel. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 357

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly evidences the dehumanization mechanics underpinning how institutions catalogued stolen people — relevant to the property-law-as-afterlife thread of the reparations argument.
• XREF: connects to: Polarised traits like cleanliness are imposed to mark slaves as nearer to animals — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 206