Lawsuit: Harvard ‘shamelessly’ profits from photos of slaves
Harvard University BOSTON — has “shamelessly” turned a profit from photos of two 19th-century slaves while ignoring requests to turn the photos over to the slaves’ descendants, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Tamara Lanier, of Norwich, Connecticut, is suing the Ivy League school for “wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation” of images she says depict two of her ancestors. Her suit, filed in Massachusetts state court, demands that Harvard immediately turn over the photos, acknowledge her ancestry and pay an unspecified sum in damages.
Harvard spokesman Jonathan Swain said they have not been served, “and with that is in no position to comment on this complaint.”
At the center of the case is a series of 1850 daguerreotypes, an early type of photo, taken of two South Carolina slaves identified as Renty and his daughter, Delia. Both were posed shirtless and photographed from several angles. The images are believed to be the earliest known photos of American slaves.
They were commissioned by Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, whose theories on racial difference were used to support slavery in the U.S. The lawsuit says Agassiz came across Renty and Delia while touring plantations in search of racially “pure” slaves born in Africa.
“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.”
The suit attacks Harvard for its “exploitation” of Renty’s image at a 2017 conference and in other uses. It says Harvard has capitalized on the photos by demanding a “hefty” licensing fee to reproduce the images. It also draws attention to a book Harvard sells for $40 with Renty’s portrait on the cover.
Among other demands, the suit asks Harvard to acknowledge that it bears responsibility for the humiliation of Renty and Delia, and that Harvard “was complicit in perpetuating and justifying the institution of slavery.”
A researcher at a Harvard museum rediscovered the photos in storage in 1976. But Lanier’s case argues Agassiz never legally owned the photos because he didn’t have his subjects’ consent, and that he didn’t have the right to pass them to Harvard. Instead, the suit says, Lanier is the rightful owner.
The suit also argues that Harvard’s continued possession of the images violates the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.
“Renty is 169 years a slave by our calculation,” said civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, one of Lanier’s lawyers. “How long will it be before Harvard finally frees Renty?”
Lanier says she grew up hearing stories about Renty passed down from her mother. While enslaved in Columbia, South Carolina, Renty taught himself to read and later held secret Bible readings. He is described as “small in stature but towering in the minds of those who knew him.”
Lanier has verified her genealogical ties to Renty, who is her great-great-greatgrandfather.
“My mother made sure that not only her children and her grandchildren, but everyone, knew the stories,” she said. Asked what she would do if given the photos, Lanier said she wants the opportunity to tell “the true story of who Renty was.”