Controversial daguerreotypes welcomed to International African American Museum in 'homecoming'
In 2021, the International African American Museum was still being built at the edge of the harbor when Tamara Lanier suggested that a set of daguerreotypes might end up there — should she win her lawsuit against Harvard University over their ownership.
In May 2025, the drawn-out legal battle was settled. Harvard agreed to relinquish the fragile, controversial, valuable portraits of naked enslaved people from South Carolina plantations, photographed against their will.
Less than a year later, Lanier, who determined she’s a descendent of one of the subjects photographed 176 years earlier, was at the museum March 11 to celebrate the transfer of the daguerreotypes to Charleston.
“This is an historic moment, a moment when sons and daughters of stolen ancestors can stand with pride and righteously proclaim a moral victory for reparations and repatriation,” she told a gathering of people at the museum’s “homecoming” celebration.
https://www.postandcourier.com/news/daguerreotypes-international-african-american-museum/article_9982855f-3b2f-403b-8837-98a3758ab814.html
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