Erik L. Peterson

Race and Evolution in Antebellum Alabama: The Polygenist Prehistory We’d Rather Ignore

The name of Alabama physician Josiah Clark Nott (1804–1873) adorns a building on the campus of the University of Alabama perhaps in part because he made it possible for scientists to speak of the origins of humanity and an antiquated Earth without first nodding to Genesis. Nott popularized a fully secular science that investigated the development of humanity two decades before Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871). But Nott also provided solid scientific support for some of the most repugnant racial theories of the Victorian era. Using previously unexplored archival resources, this essay attempts to clear up the mythology surrounding Nott, the history of evolutionary theory, and the role of American science during the foundation of anthropology.