BBC News
ReutersHarvard University has agreed to convey a set of historical photos that are believed to be among the most depicting enslaved people in the United States.
The agreement ends a long legal battle between the institution and Tamara Lanie, an author from Connecticut, who claims to be a descendant of two people shown in the photos.
The images made in 1850 will be transferred to the International African Museum in South Carolina, where the people shown in the photos are enslaved.
Harvard said he had always hoped the photos would be given to another museum. D -Ja Lanie said he was “ecstatic” with the result.
The images are Daggerotypes, a very early form of contemporary photographs, and have been taken 15 years 13 13, the amendment of the US Constitution to eliminate slavery.
The photos were rediscovered in storage at the Harvard's Harvard's Harvard Museum and Ethnology in 1976.
The 15 images contain people identified by the Peibodi Museum such as Alfred, Delia, Dran, Fasna, Jack, Jem and Rent. According to G -Ja Lanie, the settlement will mean the transfer of all images, not just those for Renty and Delia.
The photos were ordered by Harvard and Zoologist Professor Luis Agasis as part of discredited research to prove the superiority of white people. He supported polygenicism, now a debunked belief that human races are developing separately.
The case is part of the public debate about how universities in America should respond to their historical relations with slavery. In 2016, the Harvard Law Faculty agreed to change a shield based on a ridge of the 18th century slave page.
Harvard did not comment on the details of the settlement, but a spokesman for the university said “has long been impatient to place Zealy Daguerreotypes with another museum or other public institution to put them in the appropriate context and to increase access to them for all Americans.”
The spokesman added that “the claim of Da -lanier for the ownership of the Dagonotypes creates a complicated situation, especially because Harvard has failed to confirm that Da Lannie is related to people in the Dagoreerotypes.”
Ghetto imagesD -lanie He filed a case against Harvard in 2019.Arguing that the images were made without the consent and accusation of the university for profit from them through large licensing fees.
In 2022, the Massachusetts Supreme Court of Justice upheld a greater decision, which rejected the request of Gia Lanie for ownership. However, she was allowed to ask for damage to emotional distress. He ruled that Harvard has a “complicity” in “horrifying actions” about the creation of the images.
“Harvard's current obligations cannot be divorced from his past abuses,” he added.
D -Ja Lanie told the BBC that it was “ecstatic” for the settlement. “I always knew above all that I could never take care of the Durgenrotypes at the level they would require,” she said.
“There are so many connections that bind Renty and Delia, and the other enslaved people to this particular part of South Carolina to repatriated them would be like a home return ceremony.”
The South Carolina Museum helped Gi Lanie with her claims to genealogy, but did not participate in the legal battle. His president said he intended to hold and show the images “in the context of truth and empathy.”
“These are not gentle images and the story behind how they became even more difficult to hear,” Tonya Matthew told the BBC.
“So to be in a space that has already created a place for conversations about the inhumanity of slavery and enslavement, and to what extent these consequences echo to this day is what we do and this is our mission.”