Harvard settles suit over enslaved ancestor images

Harvard University has agreed to settle a deeply emotional dispute over who has the rights to images of enslaved Africans taken in 1850 by a professor who sought to support a racist theory.

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The daguerrotypes, a precursor to modern photographs, are considered to be the earliest known images of black American slaves, who were posed nude and semi-nude “without consent, dignity or compensation,” a 2019 lawsuit stated.

The Cambridge institution has agreed to relinquish the images and has offered plaintiff Tamara Lanier a confidential monetary settlement.

Ms Lanier says she is a descendant of a slave known only by his first name, Renty, who was photographed nude, and his daughter Delia, who was photographed nude from the waist up, in images commissioned by Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz as supposed evidence of black inferiority.