Lawsuit prompts Harvard to relinguish black photos

Harvard University settles with Tamara Lanier, who filed a lawsuit six years ago for possessiohn of photos of her enslaved ancestors.

The university has agreed to relinquish ownership of two 175-year-old daguerreotypes of an enslaved father named Renty and his daughter Delia, whom Lanier says are her ancestors.

James Chisholm, a spokesperson for Harvard, said in a statement May 28 that the university has not been able to verify the relationship between Lanier and the subjects in the portraits.

Although Lanier sued for the portraits, they will not be given to her. Instead, they will both be transferred to the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina ― the state of the subjects' enslavement, according to the New York Times. Images of five other enslaved individuals will also be brought to the museum.

Lanier expressed joy in the case's outcome, which was announced May 28.

"I have been at odds with Harvard over the custody and care of my enslaved ancestors, and now I can rest assured that my enslaved ancestors will be traveling to a new home," she told the New York Times in an interview. "They will be returning where it all began, and they will be placed in an institution that can celebrate their humanity."

Here's what to know about the history behind the earliest known slave photographs.

What is a daguerreotype?

A daguerreotype is a photograph taken by an early photographic process employing an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor.

Who commissioned the daguerreotypes?

The portraits' origins are deeply rooted in a racist theory called polygenesis ― one held by famous Harvard professor Louis Agassiz. The scientific theory proposes that different species or races of humans developed independently from different ancestral origins rather than sharing a common ancestor.

Agassiz set out to prove his theory at a scientific conference in Charleston in 1850, a time when photography was fairly new to the scene. While in S.C., he and a group of white men from Cambridge, Massachusetts, selected seven Black people from nearby plantations and brought them to a posh photo studio in downtown Columbia. Two of them were Renty and Delia, joined by Jack, his daughter Dana, and three men, Alfred, Fassena, and Jem.

According to the National African-American Reparations Commission, all seven slaves were forced to partly or fully strip down before a camera. A photographer then captured them from the "front, side and back like the specimens Agassiz considered them to be."

It is unknown if Agassiz was the one behind the camera or if he directed the photograph in person. However, a few months later, he wrote in the Christian Examiner that he had recently "examined closely many native Africans belonging to different tribes."

How could Lanier be related to Renty and Delia?

Renty is not a common name in slave inventories. The chance of it being common among African-born men held in bondage in S.C. is even less likely.

But Lanier heard the name Renty recounted many times growing up through the stories of her mother Mattye Thompson Lanier, a retired teacher and daughter to sharecropper parents in rural Meigs, Alabama, per The Harvard Crimson. Through word of mouth, Mattye Thompson Lanier learned the oral history of "Papa Renty," an enslaved man who taught himself and other slaves to read English despite it being a criminal offense. Her grandfather, a cotton farmer born into slavery in S.C., had shared the legacy of Renty with her over the years.

Her brother, who went by the name "Willie," was also named Renty.

On her deathbed, Mattye Thompson Lanier told her daughter one of her last dying wishes.

"I want you to write this down," she said in the hope that Lanier could preserve their family's history.

When did Lanier learn about the Renty and Delia portraits?

Lanier first heard about the portraits of Renty and Delia through an old cashier at a sandwich shop she used to frequent before returning to work as a probation officer. Soon after her mother's death, Lanier told the cashier about the promise she gave to her mother in documenting their family's ancestry, according to the Harvard Crimson. The cashier just happened to be a genealogical research enthusiast.

Upon entering the shop another day, Lanier was excitedly told by the cashier, "I found your Papa Renty on the internet!" He emailed her two links that she would open later that night, which led to a story about Agassiz and the haunting daguerreotypes.

"Immediately, I knew that that was the man that I had heard so many stories about my entire life,” Lanier told The Harvard Crimson. "I remember just staring, trapped in a gaze where I’m just staring and staring in his eyes, and I felt like he was staring back at me."