A Massachusetts court docket issued its opinion at present, June 23, on the landmark case of Tamara Lanier, who sued Harvard College over daguerreotypes of her enslaved ancestors, Delia and Renty Taylor, housed on the faculty’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Within the 91-page doc, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court granted Harvard’s movement to dismiss Lanier’s property-related claims, however upheld these associated to the bodily and emotional penalties she suffered in consequence of Harvard’s actions.
The choice means Lanier can now deliver a civil lawsuit in opposition to Harvard for its continued replica and use of the daguerreotypes, which can represent “reckless infliction of emotional distress.”
“We conclude that Harvard’s present obligations cannot be divorced from its past abuses,” reads the opinion, written by Affiliate Justice Scott L. Kafker. In mild of Harvard’s “complicity in the horrific actions surrounding the creation of the daguerreotypes,” Kafker continues, the court docket discerns “a duty on Harvard’s part to take reasonable care in responding to her.”
“We are faced with an aggrieved plaintiff who has pleaded facts that, if proved, demand a full remedy and nothing less,” the opinion concludes.
Harvard has not but responded to Hyperallergic’s rapid request for remark.
The daguerreotypes have been commissioned in 1850 by Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, a proponent of polygenism, a pseudoscientific principle that Black and White folks have separate organic origins generally invoked in assist of White racial superiority. Fifteen images in whole, two portraying Delia and Renty stripped to the waist, have been transferred to the Peabody in 1936, the place they remained in a picket cupboard for 4 a long time earlier than they have been rediscovered by a museum researcher who, in line with the plaintiff, “expressed concern for the families of the men and women depicted.”
Lanier, who grew up listening to tales a few man named “Papa Renty” — her great-great-great grandfather — got here throughout the pictures of Renty and his daughter Delia whereas researching her household’s lineage after her mom’s passing. She requested Harvard to relinquish the daguerreotypes in 2017, a request the college ignored, and in March 2019, Lanier sued the college for wrongful possession and expropriation. A court docket granted Harvard’s movement to dismiss the lawsuit, invoking precedents that set up images as “the property of the photographer,” not the themes or their ancestors.
However Lanier appealed, and at present’s choice at present is the outcome of oral arguments heard final November. On the time, Hyperallergic printed a particular “Free Renty” version devoted to the case, that includes 12 scholarly endorsements of scholar Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s amicus brief in assist of Lanier.
The court docket cites not solely Harvard’s holdings of the pictures, however its repeated use of the pictures as soon as the college was conscious of Lanier’s objections. The college not solely “cavalierly dismissed her ancestral claims and disregarded her requests,” however didn’t contact her when it printed the pictures on the duvet of a book and as part of a related conference.
Final month, Harvard College printed a headline-grabbing report on its legacy of slavery, accompanied by an announcement of a $100 million endowment fund to “redress” that grim half of its historical past. However the faculty didn’t focus on Delia and Renty’s pictures. Lanier, who saw the report as “an opportunity for Harvard to come clean with all of its past misdeed and all of its past indiscretions,” mentioned she was annoyed by the omission.
Immediately’s choice supplies a glimmer of hope, permitting Lanier to deliver the case again to Massachusetts’s Superior Court and maintain Harvard accountable.
“This historic win marks one of the first time in United States history a court has ruled that slaves’ descendants can seek accountability for the atrocities to which their family members were subjected over 170 years ago,” mentioned Josh Koskoff, Tamara Lanier’s lawyer, in an announcement shared with Hyperallergic.
“Harvard is not the rightful owner of these photos and should not profit from them,” Koskoff added. “As Tamara Lanier and her family have said for years, it is time for Harvard to let Renty and Delia come home.”
