Slaves, servants, and women produced science credited to European masters

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 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

The daguerreotypes were on display at one point but have since been stored away; replicas have been made for public viewing. This was the research paper that Meredith had asked me about earlier—and in it, she argued that since the “Harvard Seven” images were taken against their will to prove a quickly debunked scientific theory that Harvard’s employee Louis Agassiz developed during his tenure at the university, they were liable for the mistreatment of the “dataset,” in this case the daguerreotypes themselves, since they each represent a human being used as a data point. She believed, as I do, that every time Harvard uses those images—which are not anonymous—it violates the Belmont Report’s guidelines to protect an individual’s identity. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1019 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Enslaved people photographed for science were treated as specimens — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard…, 611; Slave labor underpinned the political and economic power of European empires; Colonial rulers deliberately concealed non-European scientific achievements from colonized students — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1581 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Agassiz cataloged enslaved people like zoological specimens for polygenesis research #exemplifies (0.93) — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 606
• Enslaved people photographed for Agassiz functioned as research data points #exemplifies (0.92) — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1019