Silas Chandler’s grandchildren grew up in a segregated West Point full of paradoxes. Silas’s labors had left them better off than many of their white neighbors, who were friendly when no one was around but denigrated them when other whites were present. They went to a private all-black Presbyterian school instead of the local segregated one.

“After school we used to get out there with the white kids and play ball,” said Bobbie. “A couple times they had people come by and say, 'The white kids and the black kids are not supposed to play ball together.’”

Myra’s recollection is a bit harsher. “They were only friends with us when they were around us — for sure we played with them. I even took a bath with the little girl, she was my friend,” Myra said. “But outside of our neighborhood, we were niggers. So that’s the way that was.”

Most of the black Chandlers moved away from West Point, except for Cyril, who moved back in 1972 after college and started his own printing business. After going to Howard University, Sara moved to Detroit to raise her children. Myra was a schoolteacher in California until she retired years ago. Bobbie and his brother Jimmy ran a printing business together for 30 years in Washington, D.C. (A sixth sibling, George, moved to Chicago, where he worked in a metal refinery. He died last year.)

Though they mostly lost touch with Andrew Chandler’s family before the ceremony in 1994, state documents show at least one of his descendants, Kyle Chandler II — from the same family that Bobbie said helped out when Bobbie’s home burned down — was a member of the White Citizens’ Councils in West Point in the late 1950s, an organization dedicated to preserving white supremacy. Kyle is named as a member of the council in a document that identifies George Chandler, Silas’s son, as one of the members of the black community who might be “members of the NAACP and potential troublemakers in the event of a racial crisis.” (Battaile Sr. described Kyle as a “distant cousin,” Kyle Chandler III seemed surprised and dismayed by the information about his father, Kyle Chandler II.)

Bobbie said that he has a “good relationship” with the Chandler Battailes, and that they used to go out to dinner together when he visited Mississippi, but haven’t spoken in years. Once it became clear that Silas was a slave, not a soldier, Bobbie and Cyril decided they agreed with the rest of the family and didn’t want the Confederate honors at Silas’s grave.

“I’m glad that the Confederate flag was moved off of his grave, and I’m glad that the Confederate flag has been removed from the state capitol and things like that, in some states,” said Bobbie. “I made a mistake.” The cross was stolen, and though Confederate flags continued to be placed at Silas’s resting place, those would disappear too. Sometimes Cyril would take them, sometimes someone else.

As for the tintype, Bobbie told BuzzFeed News that Andrew Chandler’s family had agreed to split the money with them if it was sold. "I never did receive any of that,” he said.

Andrew Chandler Battaile Jr. — who today works for the foundation that preserves Stratford Hall, the ancestral home of the family of Robert E. Lee — says there was no such agreement, despite the fact that the value of the photograph is due to Silas’s presence in it. “I never heard of such an agreement, no,” Battaile Jr. said.

The tintype was sold to Liljenquist, the collector, for an undisclosed amount, in 2014. Liljenquist, who promptly donated the photo to the Library of Congress, told BuzzFeed News that the sale contract prohibited him from disclosing the price he paid.

Silas’s descendants are relieved that the picture ended up in the Library of Congress. But for some of them, the sale of the photograph means that the family that once owned Silas was able to exploit him one final time.

“It’s just continuing to make money off of a dead slave, that’s the way I see it, them selling the tintype,” said Myra. “So that’s pretty low. That’s about as low as you can go.“