The corporate stock company model originated partly in the slave economy

Evidence

I was stunned—but not surprised. This document was revelatory and helped me understand just how complicit Harvard was, and still is, in perpetuating white supremacy. Francis Cabot Lowell was a Harvard graduate who founded the Boston Manufacturing Company. His father, John Lowell, married into the slave-trading business and is credited with “creating the now-universal stock company corporate model,” as well as “converting Massachusetts from an agriculture-dependent region into a mechanized industrial one—whose principal cultural institution—Harvard—spawned graduates and professors who would help America emerge as a world superpower in the twentieth century.” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 821

Categorization

• SEED: The claim that the universal corporate model emerged from a slave-trading family could anchor an essay on — and define — how capitalism’s legal scaffolding carries slavery’s imprint.