One picture million words. Below top, Papa Renty with his daughter Delia, the oldest recorded photograph of slaves, 1850.
The story behind the making of this image explains the obvious look of anguish on the faces of both Renty and his daughter.
Louis Agassiz, a pioneer of natural science and a professor at Harvard, had traveled to South Carolina where Renty and Delia` where enslaved hoping to prove that different races did not share a common origin, a racist theory called polygenesis.
The rest of the story, 150 plus years later, is happier and well worth a read. The strength and dogged perseverance of one of their descendants to lawfully procure possession of the image from Harvard is inspiring to say the least. Below bottom, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Papa Renty, Tamara Lanier, with one of the descendants of Agassiz.
