In March 2026, a rumor circulated online that, in the 1860s, three Black sisters named Clara, Ruth and Viola secretly worked with a photographer named Jonathan Whitmore to free hundreds of U.S. slaves. According to the claim, the sisters transmitted intelligence in Whitmore's pictures with coded hand positions and dress patterns. A woman named Dr. Amelia Grant of Howard University allegedly discovered the covert efforts following a 2019 visit to Harrison's Auction House in Richmond, Virginia.
For example, on Feb. 28, a user managing the Connected Souls YouTube channel uploaded a video (archived) with the title, "It was just a portrait of three sisters — but experts zoom in and discover a secret." The clip featured a thumbnail image supposedly showing the three sisters wearing dresses and sitting for a photo.
(Connected Souls/YouTube)
Other examples of the claim appeared on Facebook (archived), and Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether the rumor was true. One reader emailed with a reference to glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as stories "that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental":
I watched this video and listened to this story it calls back to the early days of Snopes and glurge content. The women are wearing wristwatches. I [can't] find an Ameila Grant at Howard University, any listing at the Smithsonian, and nothing on a reverse search of the image. The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSoRCDO5H0c.
We first used search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo to locate possible evidence from credible sources about Clara, Ruth and Viola, as well as Whitmore and Grant. We also looked for any evidence of an establishment named Harrison's Auction House in Richmond, Virginia. If the story was true, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on it following Grant's alleged 2019 discovery. That was not the case.
The rumor was fictional, as were the names of the characters and auction house. The user or users managing the Connected Souls YouTube account — a person or people residing in Brazil, according to the channel's bio — used artificial intelligence tools to create inspiring stories and fake images about fictional historical events.
Therefore, we've rated this claim false.
A prompt with the Google Gemini AI tool SynthID Detector scanned the image for a SynthID watermark — a hidden label Google adds to images made or manipulated with its AI platforms. In response, Gemini concluded, "A SynthID check of this image indicates that most or all of it was edited or generated with Google AI."
GPTZero, a tool that aims to detect AI-generated text, determined with 100% certainty the video's captions were AI-generated. The voice resembled AI-generated voices as well, as is standard with such YouTube channels and fictional, AI-generated videos.
Creators of such content capitalize on social media users' willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue either from the videos or from external websites to which Facebook posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)
Let us note here: These types of AI detection tools are fallible. Snopes cautions people against using them for definitive answers on media's authenticity without supporting evidence.
The Connected Souls YouTube channel did not display any external contact methods for journalists to ask questions about their fake and fictional content.
Snopes has debunked similar rumors before. For example, in April 2025, we investigated an image allegedly showing Black American cowgirls during the American frontier era.