HW 2/13

Plessy Vs Ferguson:

  • Miller: 1st intention of amendment: abolish slavery, give black people rights
  • White League: killed blacks in order to deter participation in voting
  • Harlan: “insisted on extensive interpretations of the Thirteenth Amendment; found additional support in the Fourteenth Amendment for Congress to enact the 1875 Civil Rights Act to create new right for United States citizens”

Mismeasure of Man:

  • Hard-liners: blacks=inferior; biological status justified their enslavement
  • Soft-liners: blacks=inferior; freedom doesn’t depend on intelligence.
  • Skull size differences meant black people were inferior. Inaccurate science data tried to prove this theory.
  • Compared black people to apes
  • Blumenbach: “attributed racial differences to the influences of climate”
  • Monogenism: origin from single source
  • Recapitulation: higher creatures repeat adult stages of lower animals
  • Charles White: against climate theory, proposed that physical differences show inferiority.
  • Agassiz: wasn’t opponent to slavery. -“Centers of Creation” -“Taxonomist splitter”
  • Agassiz: thought blacks were different species

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