Tamara Lanier Decries University’s Refusal To Turn Over Daguerreotypes in Book Talk

Tamara K. Lanier, who is suing Harvard for emotional distress over its possession of daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors, repeated her demand for Harvard to return the photographs and admonished the University for allegedly failing to reckon with its legacy of slavery at a Tuesday talk.

Lanier claims Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology owns 19th century photographs of her great-great-great grandfather Renty and his daughter Delia. Lanier, who published her book “From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim my Legacy” in January, spoke at a book talk hosted by unrecognized student group AFRO, short for the African and African American Resistance Organization.

The University denied Lanier’s request for the daguerreotypes on the grounds that they could not verify that she was descended from the individuals in the photographs. Lanier, however, alleged during the talk that “to this day, they have never looked at my research.”

When asked for comment, Harvard spokesperson Sarah E. Kennedy O’Reilly directed The Crimson to a 2023 statement to ProPublica that said internal and external genealogists had examined Lanier’s family tree on the University’s behalf.

Lanier situated her fight to reclaim the photographs as part of Harvard’s broader reckoning with its legacy of slavery. During the talk, she — and the event’s organizers — suggested that the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative was merely “a great PR stunt.”

“If they believed what they were saying,” Lanier added, referring to the initiative, “They wouldn’t be fighting me in court.”

Kennedy O’Reilly wrote in a statement that the Legacy of Slavery initiative is “entirely separate” from the Lanier case.

Lanier initially filed her suit in 2019, alleging emotional distress and that Harvard had violated copyright law by holding and indirectly profiting from images of her ancestors. In 2022, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court threw out the copyright suit, deeming Harvard professor Louis L.R. Agassiz the copyright owner as the creator of the images, but allowed Lanier’s emotional distress suit to proceed.

“Despite its duty of care to her, Harvard cavalierly dismissed her ancestral claims and disregarded her requests, despite its own representations that it would keep her informed of further developments,” the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote at the time.

Agassiz commissioned the images in 1850 as part of his infamous effort to prove that Black individuals were biologically inferior to their white counterparts. During the event, Lanier argued that Harvard’s possession or display of the images is therefore “tarnished by the ugly history of how it was acquired.”

Lanier said during the talk that the daguerreotypes are rare tangible evidence of the life of a man whose “oral history defines him.” According to Lanier, Renty taught himself how to read using “a Webster’s Blue-Backed Speller” and went on to educate other enslaved individuals at a time when doing so “would have imperiled his life.”

“What I hope to see in the very near future, are these daguerreotypes at a place like the Afro-American Museum in DC, where they celebrate them for the amazing people that they were, and they tell of this fight to get them there,” she added.

In her reply, Kennedy O’Reilly pointed The Crimson to the University’s 2023 statement to ProPublica, which said the University has “long suggested placing the daguerreotypes — all 15 of them — in another institution that would allow them to be more accessible to a broader segment of the public, to be understood in an appropriate historical context, and to tell the stories of the enslaved individuals they depict.”

As of now, however, the daguerreotypes remain in the University’s possession. In 2023, the University told ProPublica that it was difficult to “arrange for such a transfer” while Lanier’s suit was ongoing.

“There is a legacy of love, respect and reverence for this man. So the images are important, because it is a part of who I am, and so that is one of the reasons why I have persisted for the last 15 years,” Lanier said.

In the interview, Lanier said she remained “cautiously optimistic” that Harvard might voluntarily return the daguerreotypes, though Harvard has not done so in the six years since she first filed her suit.

—Staff writer Sophie Gao can be reached at sophie.gao@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sophiegao22.

—Staff writer Alexandra M. Kluzak can be reached at alexandra.kluzak@thecrimson.com.