Photos of Slaves Are Property of Harvard, Not a Descendant, Judge Rules – The New York Times

Images of Slaves Are Property of Harvard, Not a Descendant, Judge Rules

The woman who says the enslaved people are her ancestors plans to appeal the decision “about the patriarch of a family, a subject of bedtime stories.”

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/us/harvard-slave-photos-renty.html

The judge acknowledged that the daguerreotypes had been taken under “horrific circumstances” but said that if the enslaved subjects, Renty and Delia, did not own the images when they were taken in 1850, then the woman who brought the lawsuit, Tamara Lanier, did not own them either.