The 1850 Photograph That Exposed a Dark Chapter of American History

In 1850, photographs were taken of Renty, a man who was enslaved on a plantation in South Carolina, and his daughter Delia, along with several other enslaved people. The images were created using the daguerreotype process, an early photographic technique, by photographer Joseph T. Zealy. The photographs were commissioned by Louis Agassiz, a Harvard naturalist who was attempting to support the racist pseudoscientific theory of polygenism, which claimed that different human populations had separate origins. The photographs were intended to serve as supposed scientific evidence for this idea. Today, they are not regarded as evidence of polygenism, but instead as deeply important historical records of slavery and the racist ideology used to justify it. The photographs were largely forgotten before being rediscovered in the Peabody Museum archives at Harvard in 1976. In 2019, after a lengthy legal battle, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Tamara Lanier could proceed with claims concerning ownership and use of the photographs as a descendant of Renty and Delia. 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archevault 📺 Main Channel: @Archevault