Harvard University agrees to transfer ownership of slavery photographs

Al Jazeera

5 days ago

The images are some of the oldest known photographs of enslaved people in the United States.
But the daguerreotypes of an African man known as Renty and his daughter Delia have been at the centre of a years-long legal dispute over the legacy of slavery and those who profit from it.
On Wednesday, that dispute came to a close, when the institution that held the 175-year-old photographs — Harvard University — agreed to a settlement that would end its ownership of the images.
Instead, the daguerreotypes will be transferred to the International African American Museum, a recently opened educational institution in Charleston, South Carolina, with a unique tie to the transatlantic slave trade: It is located on a wharf that used to be the largest port of entry for enslaved people trafficked into North America.
The settlement was the culmination of a lawsuit led by Tamara Lanier, a Connecticut woman who says she is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Renty.
In 2019, she sued Harvard for the 'wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation' of the images, part of a series of 15 daguerrotypes made to support white supremacist ideas.
Lanier's lawsuit accused Harvard of reaping profits from the photographs, through licensing feeds and reprints on the covers of books and conferences. She had called on Harvard to return the photographs to her and acknowledge its ties to slavery in the US, as well as pay damages.
While Harvard did not acknowledge Lanier's claims to the photographs, it did agree to an undisclosed financial deal as part of Wednesday's settlement.
Lanier's legal team and others celebrated the deal as a milestone in addressing the ongoing toll of slavery.
'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,' said Tonya M Matthews, the CEO of the International African American Museum.
The museum pledged to consult with Lanier as it determines how best to present the portraits of Renty and Delia.
The daguerreotypes were shot in 1850 using individuals taken from plantations — sites of forced agricultural labour — in South Carolina.
A Harvard biologist named Louis Agassiz had commissioned the photographer Joseph Zealy to shoot the images, with the aim of using them as illustrations to advance a racist theory. Agassiz believed in 'polygenism', the false idea that different races came from different origins — and that white people were genetically superior to other races.
For the portrait-style daguerreotypes, Renty, Delia and other forcibly enslaved people were stripped down to their waists. They were then captured at different angles: some facing the camera, others in profile.
Several of the daguerrotypes show people forced to fully stand naked in front of the camera.
The daguerreotypes were eventually stored at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, where they were forgotten for nearly a century. In 1976, however, a museum curator named Ellie Reichlin found the images in a museum cabinet, propelling them to newfound fame.
Renty's image, for example, was reproduced on the cover of textbooks, at conferences, and in articles, raising questions about whether the reprints were dehumanising him again and again — and who should own his image.
Harvard University has long disputed that it has profited from images like those of Renty and Delia, saying it only charges a 'nominal' fee for reprints.
Lanier has said she first came across Renty's and Delia's images when she was doing genealogical research into her family's history. She told US media that she had grown up with stories of 'Papa Renty' even before she came across the daguerrotypes.
When she tried to share her family history with Harvard, Lanier alleges she was repeatedly rebuffed. Eventually, she filed her lawsuit, arguing that Harvard could not own the images as they were taken under duress.
'To Agassiz, Renty and Delia were nothing more than research specimens,' the lawsuit argues. '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.'
Dozens of Agassiz's descendants also penned a letter on Lanier's behalf, calling on Harvard to 'acknowledge and redress the harm done by Louis Agassiz'.
Initially, Harvard sought to dismiss Lanier's lawsuit, and in 2021, Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Camille Sarrouf Jr sided with the university.
While acknowledging the inhumane circumstances the photographs were taken under, Judge Sarrouf wrote that the subject of the daguerreotypes had no rights over the copies made.
'The law, as it currently stands, does not confer a property interest to the subject of a photograph regardless of how objectionable the photograph's origins may be,' Sarrouf wrote.
But in 2022, the Massachusetts Supreme Court came to a different conclusion, siding instead with Lanier. It vacated the 2021 decision to dismiss Lanier's claim, clearing a path for further legal hearings on the subject.
'We conclude that Harvard's present obligations cannot be divorced from its past abuses,' the state court wrote, denouncing Harvard's 'complicity in the horrific actions surrounding the creation of the daguerreotypes'.
'Once Lanier communicated her understanding that the daguerreotypes depicted her ancestors', the court found that the university should have taken 'reasonable care' to respond to her concerns.
The lawsuit over the fate of the photographs has continued since then — but Harvard itself has faced new challenges since the state supreme court's ruling.
Over the last few months, the prestigious Ivy League school has seen all its federal contracts and grants frozen or cancelled, as part of an escalating feud with President Donald Trump.
The Republican leader has accused Harvard of allowing anti-Semitism to spread on its campuses and using discriminatory practices for student admissions and hiring, both charges that the school denies.
Harvard has refused to accept the Trump administration's demands for greater control over campus activities, citing its duty to protect its academic freedom. Trump, meanwhile, has faced criticism for seeking to stifle dissent and protest on US campuses.
Wednesday's settlement comes amid that ongoing political standoff. Still, Lanier's lawyer Joshua Koskoff told The Associated Press that the settlement was an 'unprecedented' victory.
'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.
He did, however, express disappointment that the school did not directly address Lanier's claims to the pictures nor its connection to slavery.
Harvard, meanwhile, issued a statement saying it has 'long been eager to place the Zealy Daguerreotypes with another museum or other public institution' in order to increase access to them.
'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.'