The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Thursday ruled that Harvard University does not need to relinquish slave photos taken for a Harvard professor’s racist 1850 study to the photo subjects’ descendant, Tamara Lanier. However, Lanier can sue Harvard for emotional distress “as a result of Harvard’s mistreatment of her[.]”

In 1850, a Harvard professor conducted a study regarding polygenism, which is a “pseudoscientific theory that racial groups lack a common biological origin and thus are fundamentally and categorically distinct.”  The professor toured South Carolina plantations to find individuals who he believed were racially “pure” Africans to photograph and study in furtherance of his polygenism theory.

In 1976, these daguerrotypes, early photographs, were discovered by a museum researcher in a wooden cabinet in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. While the researcher expressed concerns for the ancestors of the individuals depicted in the daguerrotypes, “Harvard did not act on the researcher’s concerns.” Instead, Harvard claimed the photos as its property. These daguerrotypes became well-known because they are believed to be the “earliest known photographs of American slaves.”

The Court detailed that Harvard “brushed [Lanier] off, publicly dismissed her ancestral claim, and continued to display and profit from the daguerrotypes without Lanier’s input or involvement,” which “departs from every ethical code[.]” Further, the Court wrote that Harvard’s actions were “selfish” and the school put “its agenda before any effort to reckon with its past or make amends in the present.” The Court ruled Harvard breached its duty of care to the Lanier based on the university’s “ongoing treatment” towards her since she wrote the university a letter in 2011.