The archive of a 19th-century race scientist. Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) was a Philadelphia physician, naturalist, and central figure at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia from the 1820s until his death as its president. Morton is known today as among the most influential architects of scientific racism in the United States, both for his publications – most notably Crania Americana (1839), Crania Aegpytiaca (1844), and a Catalogue of Skulls (1849) – and for the collection of nearly one thousand grave-robbed or otherwise non-consensually taken human skulls from across the world, amassed during his lifetime to supply the “data” for these works.

This project is led by anthropologist and historian Paul Wolff Mitchell in partnership with community organizations.