Harvard agrees to relinquish early photos of slaves, ending a long legal battle

Tamara Lanier attends a news conference near the Harvard Club, on March 20, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

BOSTON — Harvard University will relinquish 175-year-old photographs believed to be the earliest taken of enslaved people to a South Carolina museum devoted to African American history as part of a settlement with one of the subjects’ descendants.

The photos of the subjects identified by Tamara Lanier as her great-great-great-grandfather Renty, whom she calls “Papa Renty,” and his daughter Delia will be transferred from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology to the International African American Museum in South Carolina, the state where they were enslaved in 1850 when the photos were taken, a lawyer for Lanier said Wednesday.

The settlement marks the end of a 15-year battle between Lanier and the esteemed university to release the 19th-century daguerreotypes, a precursor to modern-day photographs. Lanier’s attorney Joshua Koskoff told The Associated Press that the resolution is an “unprecedented” victory for descendants of those enslaved in the U.S. and praised his client’s yearslong determination in pursuing justice for the people she had identified as her ancestors.

“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.

On Wednesday, Lanier stood holding a portrait of Papa Renty while arm-in-arm with Susanna Moore, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, who commissioned the images and whose theories on racial difference were once used to support slavery in the U.S. Both women praised the resolution.

“This is a moment in history where the sons and daughters of stolen ancestors can stand with pride and rightfully proclaim a victory for reparations,” Lanier said. “This pilfered property, images taken without dignity or consent and used to promote a racist psychoscience will now be repatriated to a home where their stories can be told and their humanity can be restored.”

Moore called the images captured by her ancestor, Agassiz, a “deeply racist project.”

“This victory reminds us that the meaning of such objects in museums can and should change,” she said. “This woman standing next to me, she knew all along she was not small and she was not alone.”

A question of ownership

In 2019, Lanier sued Harvard, alleging the images were taken “without Renty’s and Delia’s consent and therefore unlawfully retained.” The suit attacked Harvard for its “exploitation” of Renty’s image at a 2017 conference and in other uses. It said Harvard has capitalized on the photos by demanding a “hefty” licensing fee to reproduce the images.

Agassiz came across Renty and Delia while touring plantations in search of racially “pure” slaves born in Africa, according to Lanier’s suit. To create the images, both Renty and Delia were posed shirtless and photographed from several angles.

“To Agassiz, Renty and Delia were nothing more than research specimens,” the suit says. “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.”

In 2021, a Massachusetts court ruled that photos are the property of the photographer, not the subject — a stance affirmed by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

However, while Harvard sought to have the case dismissed, the state high court allowed the case to proceed on Lanier’s claim to emotional distress damages.

The state’s highest court recognized “Harvard’s complicity in the horrific actions surrounding the creation of the daguerreotypes,” saying that “Harvard’s present obligations cannot be divorced from its past abuses.”

In a statement, Harvard said it had “long been eager to place the Zealy Daguerreotypes with another museum or other public institution to put them in the appropriate context and increase access to them for all Americans.”

“This settlement now allows us to move forward towards that goal,” the university said. “While we are grateful to Ms. Lanier for sparking important conversations about these images, this was a complex situation, particularly since Harvard has not confirmed that Ms. Lanier was related to the individuals in the daguerreotypes.”

A new home for Renty and Delia

Tonya M. Matthews, the CEO of the International African American Museum, called Harvard’s relinquishing of the images a moment “175 years in the making.”

“The bravery, tenacity, and grace shown by Ms. Lanier throughout the long and arduous process of returning these critical pieces of Renty and Delia’s story to South Carolina is a model for us all,” she said in a statement.

The South Carolina museum has committed to working with Lanier and including her in decisions about how the story of the images will be told.

In Lanier’s lawsuit, she asked for Harvard to acknowledge its complicity in slavery, listen to Lanier’s oral family history and pay an unspecified sum in damages. An undisclosed financial settlement was part of the resolution with Harvard announced Wednesday, but Koskoff said Harvard still hasn’t publicly acknowledged Lanier’s connection to them or its connection to perpetuating slavery in the U.S., Koskoff said.

“That is just left unanswered by Harvard,” he said.

He said Lanier isn’t expecting or waiting to hear from the institution, but that the settlement speaks for itself.

“In the end, the truth will find you — you can you can only hide from it for so long," he said. “Yes, history is written by the winners. But over time, you know, those winners look like losers sometimes.”

Leah Willingham, The Associated Press