These same records of individualism served to track people and assign them a race. A record of stable individual identity also served to create racial identities stable across space and time.

We often see “individualism” described as the alternative to racism, but the stories told here show individualism and modern, scientific racism strolling hand in hand through county courts, state capitals, and federal record offices.

Genealogical records create individuals, and genealogical records produced by governments mark the rise of “individualism.” Individualism is an idea about what people are and how they relate to each other: documents of identity are the tools and machinery that make the idea function.

Over the 19th century, governments began building paper records of identity and claiming authority over who was who.