Harvard publicly claimed legal but refused moral ownership of the slave images

Evidence

Bacow was quoted in the press stating that Harvard’s possession of the daguerreotypes was not illegal, and that the Peabody Museum’s treatment of the artifacts was to “draw attention to the fact these people were not chattel. These were real people.” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1016

Categorization

• XREF: The exact institutional argument the reader asked to be able to state: Harvard’s ‘legal not illegal’ possession position.