Molly Rogers

I am familiar with the fact that Tamara Lanier is trying to prove ancestry to Delia and Renty. She is also trying to stop their photos, taken when they were slaves, from being used for profit. Either turn them over to the family or put them in the public domain. To continue to use their photos for profit means they remain enslaved. So she is suing Harvard University. The results, when decided may set some precedents.

Google Tamara Lanier (could add either 'Delia' or 'Renty' to narrow results) if you are interested. It's a fascinating story. She is working on a book also. Maybe we'll see it here on LT someday.
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This book, Delia's Tears is not something I can read. It's thick. It reminds me of a textbook. And, I don't want to read a fictional story about the people photographed. I understand why she did it but I personally don't want to read it.

Something from the author's Preface I found interesting:

"... it is difficult if not wholly impossible to see Delia except through the eyes of others: she "exists," she has a historical presence, only because a slaveholder recorded her name when taking account of another slaveholder's property, and also because in 1850 she twice had her picture made. Were it not for such moments, brief instances in which she was deemed notable by her "keepers," we would never know of her, just as we know nothing of the great majority of people who lived and died as slaves in America." ...

"History favors the keepers - the slaveholders, politicians, and others who made the documents we now use to write history. And so, even though Delia is at the very heart of the history of the photographs, she is nowhere to be seen. To write history is one way to make her more visible: by placing her before readers, by describing how and why she was photographed... "… (mais)