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Tamara Lanier takes questions during a press conference announcing a lawsuit against Harvard University on March 20, 2019 in New York City. Lanier has accused Harvard University of the wrongful seizure, possession, and monetization of photographic images of her great-great-great-grandfather, an enslaved African man named Renty, and his daughter, Delia. Source: Kevin Hagen/Getty Images
Tamara Lanier has reached a historic settlement with Harvard University, ending a years-long legal battle over the possession of rare 19th-century photographs of enslaved individuals—including her great-great-great-grandfather, Renty, and his daughter, Delia.
On Wednesday, Lanier’s attorney, Joshua Koskoff, announced that Harvard has agreed to transfer the 175-year-old daguerreotypes—the earliest known images of enslaved people in the U.S.—to the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, where Renty and Delia were once enslaved, The Associated Press reported. The photos, which were originally taken in 1850, had been held by Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for years.
Lanier, a Connecticut resident, first filed suit in 2019, accusing Harvard of the “wrongful seizure, possession, and expropriation” of the images. She objected to the university’s use of Renty’s photo in promotional materials, including a 2017 academic conference, and claimed Harvard profited from the images by charging high licensing fees.
The photos were originally commissioned in 1850 by Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, a proponent of scientific racism, who sought to use images of enslaved Africans to support theories of racial hierarchy. Renty and Delia were forced to pose shirtless for Agassiz’s research, treated not as people but as subjects.
“To Agassiz, Renty and Delia were nothing more than research specimens,” the suit stated, according to The Associated Press. “The violence of compelling them to participate in a degrading exercise designed to prove their own subhuman status would not have occurred to him, let alone mattered.”
Source: Darren McCollester Hulton Archive / Getty
Lanier’s fight spanned more than 15 years. She also published a book titled From These Roots, documenting her fight for justice. Although a lower court initially ruled she had no legal claim to the images, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed that decision in 2022, affirming the legal and moral weight of her case.
“I think it’s one of one in American history, because of the combination of unlikely features: to have a case that dates back 175 years, to win control over images dating back that long of enslaved people — that’s never happened before,” Koskoff said proudly.
The agreement marks a significant victory not just for Lanier but for descendants of enslaved people across the country who continue to fight for justice, dignity, and recognition of their ancestors’ humanity. Notably, in March, descendants of African American tenant farmers buried at Oak Hill Plantation in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, successfully advocated for the respectful memorialization of their ancestors, as plans moved forward to demolish the historic site to make way for an industrial park, as previously reported. After reaching an agreement with local developers, it was decided that all remains—down to the soil from each grave—would be carefully exhumed and relocated, along with any existing grave markers, to a new site.
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