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Charleston Museum Unveils 1850 Daguerreotypes of Enslaved People After Harvard Transfer

Following a 2025 settlement, the museum will conserve the originals, with reproductions set to anchor a new exhibit this October.

A view of the Business School campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Faith Ninivaggi/File Photo
FILE - Susanna Moore, left, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, celebrates with Tamara Lanier, second right, and attorneys Ben Crump and Josh Koskoff at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel, May 28, 2025, in Boston, Mass. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham, File)
FILE - Tamara Lanier attends a news conference near the Harvard Club, March 20, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Tamara Lanier listens as her lawyer speaks to the media about a lawsuit accusing Harvard University of the monetization of photographic images of her great-great-great grandfather, an enslaved African man named Renty, and his daughter Delia, outside of the Harvard Club in New York, U.S., March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

Overview

  • International African American Museum officials confirmed the acquisition and public welcome of the 15 plates this week, reframing them as portraits that honor the sitters’ lives.
  • Harvard relinquished ownership under a May 2025 settlement that resolved descendant Tamara Lanier’s challenge to the university’s custody of the images.
  • The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2022 denied Lanier’s ownership claim but allowed an emotional‑distress suit, describing Harvard’s conduct as “extreme and outrageous.”
  • Made in 1850 by J. T. Zealy for Harvard professor Louis Agassiz’s racist project, the daguerreotypes are widely regarded as the earliest known photographs of enslaved Americans.
  • The museum will preserve the fragile originals under strict conservation and display high‑quality reproductions using a trauma‑informed, people‑first approach centered on Alfred, Delia, Drana, Fassena, Jack, Jem, and Renty.