In 2019, Tamara Lanier sued Harvard University, seeking possession of photographs of her ancestors, who were enslaved on plantations in the mid-1800s. Harvard profited from the sale of the rights to these images, and from displaying them in museums such as the Peabody Essex Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of Art in Fort Worth, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The issue at hand is the continuing practice of photographs of enslaved people being put on display without their consent, or the consent of their families, for large and prestigious institutions to profit from. The story of Tamara Lanier v. the President and Fellows of Harvard is one with a long, complicated history that begins in 1845 with a man named Louis Agassiz.
Louis Agassiz was a Swiss scientist working for Harvard starting in 1845, coincidentally the same year that Harvard had begun plans to establish a specialized scientific school. Agassiz's main work in the United States was proving the theory of polygenism, that different races had different origins. He was on a mission to prove that black people were of an inferior species in comparison to the white majority. He believed that his winning piece of evidence would be photographs, newly possible because of the invention of the daguerreotype. With funds given to him by Harvard, Agassiz set off to South Carolina and selected several enslaved men and women, including one older man named Renty and his daughter Delia. The enslaved were stripped of their clothing and photographed without consent or compensation, and these daguerreotypes have been under ownership of Harvard since then. In the introduction of the court case it is stated, “To Agassiz, Renty and Delia were nothing more than research specimens. 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.” Agassiz retained his professorship and served as director of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology until his death in 1873.
Tamara Lanier grew up hearing stories of her ancestors, of Renty and Delia, from her mother. When her mother died, she went on a journey to learn the rest of their story where she visited several libraries and archives that eventually led her to Harvard. She reached out to Harvard’s then-president, explaining her story and asking to learn more about the photographs. Harvard said no. In October of 2017, Lanier submitted a request to Harvard, confirming her relationship with Renty and Delia, and formally requesting for the photographs to be relinquished to her. Harvard once again refused.
In March of 2019, Lanier filed a complaint against Harvard, alleging that photographs of Renty and Delia were taken without consent and were unlawfully retained by Harvard for over 100 years. Lanier also claims that after the rediscovery of the photographs in the 1970s, Harvard went on a long campaign to erase the history behind the commission and continued to exploit them for prestige and profit, displaying them at the Peabody Museum, lending them out to other museums, using reproductions for pamphlets and books, and aggressively enforcing copyright claims, rarely letting others use reproductions without some form of profit.
In 2022, a judge ruled in favor of Harvard claiming that Harvard had always had ownership of the photographs and that there was no equivalent to NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, for the descendants of slaves, therefore repatriation was a tricky subject because of the questions of legal ownership. NAGPRA was first enacted in 1990 to address claims made by Native American tribes in the United States and it requires museums and federal agencies to produce an inventory of Native American objects and remains for such groups to be able to request repatriation. There is no form of this act that discusses the repatriation of objects forcefully obtained from enslaved individuals throughout the history of slavery in the United States. So, we see through the case of Lanier v. Harvard that despite the existence of photographs that document unconsenting individuals, the owner of the photograph, a photographer or commissioner, will have ownership of the image and choose to use the image as they please, regardless of content of the image or origin.
Why is this case important? The court case introduction states, “It is a story about opportunism, greed, and profound moral abdication by one of the country’s most revered educational institutions. It is a story about the extent to which history is told and appropriated by the powerful – and denied to the powerless.” The case against Harvard is only one example of an old and powerful institution in the United States that is facing the modern responsibility of confronting its long-standing, historical ties to slavery and the perpetuation of colonist ideals in places of higher education. It is an outrageous case of denying justice to a historically underrepresented and mistreated group. The treatment of photographs of Renty, Delia and other enslaved subjects is part of a larger, national issue. The case of Lanier v. Harvard was an attempt to undo the effects of systemic racism in America and make reparations. This is also a problem that extends outside of Harvard. Images of enslaved people exist in the National Parks Service Archives and the Library of Congress. It is difficult to untangle these images from these archive sources, and return them to their rightful owners, because so many of these images exist in the public domain. This means that anyone can take these images and use them for any reason, without paying for them. These images are not something that should not be used for profit, nor used by people who do not understand or acknowledge the original context. A lot more work must be done to honor the legacies of the enslaved people photographed, and to prevent any further exploitation of these images. Harvard and our justice system have done Tamara Lanier and her ancestors a injustice.