(28 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++AUDIO AS INCOMING++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Boston – 28 May 2025
1. Tamara Lanier, her attorney Ben Crump and Susanna Moore on stage
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Tamara Lanier, great-great-great-granddaughter of Renty:
"This is a moment in history where the sons and daughters of stolen ancestors can stand with pride and rightfully proclaim a victory for reparations. After 15 long years of struggle and strife, Harvard has at long last agreed to relinquish all 15 daguerreotypes in its possession, including – including the stolen images of my enslaved ancestors Renty and Delia. This pilfered property, images taken without dignity or consent, and used to promote a racist pseudoscience will now be repatriated to a home where their stories can be told and their humanity can be restored."
++WHITE FLASH++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Susanna Moore, descendant of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz:
"This victory reminds us that the meaning of such objects in museums can and should change."
4. Photo of ‘Papa Renty’
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Susanna Moore, descendant of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz:
"Tamara helped us understand they were objects stolen for a deeply racist project by my ancestor."
++SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY COVERED BY SHOT 4++
6. Tamara Lanier posing for pictures with her team
STORYLINE:
Harvard University will relinquish 175-year-old photographs believed to be the earliest taken of enslaved people to a South Carolina museum devoted to African American history as part of a settlement with one of the subjects’ descendants.
The photos of the subjects identified by Tamara Lanier as her great-great-great-grandfather Renty, whom she calls “Papa Renty," and his daughter Delia will be transferred from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology to the International African American Museum in South Carolina, the state where they were enslaved in 1850 when the photos were taken, a lawyer for Lanier said Wednesday.
The settlement marks the end of a 15-year battle between Lanier and the esteemed university to release the 19th-century daguerreotypes, a precursor to modern-day photographs.
On Wednesday, Lanier stood holding a portrait of Papa Renty while arm-in-arm with Susanna Moore, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, who commissioned the images and whose theories on racial difference were once used to support slavery in the U.S. Both women praised the resolution.
“This is a moment in history where the sons and daughters of stolen ancestors can stand with pride and rightfully proclaim a victory for reparations," Lanier said. “This pilfered property, images taken without dignity or consent and used to promote a racist psychoscience will now be repatriated to a home where their stories can be told and their humanity can be restored.”
Moore called the images captured by her ancestor, Agassiz, a “deeply racist project."
“This victory reminds us that the meaning of such objects in museums can and should change," she said. “This woman standing next to me, she knew all along she was not small and she was not alone.”
In 2019, Lanier sued Harvard, alleging the images were taken "without Renty’s and Delia’s consent and therefore unlawfully retained.” The suit attacked Harvard for its “exploitation” of Renty’s image at a 2017 conference and in other uses. It said Harvard has capitalized on the photos by demanding a “hefty” licensing fee to reproduce the images.
AP Video shot by Leah Willingham
===========================================================
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/9dd540a191de4752888d0e7479e03309
Author: AP Archive
Go to Source
News post in June 3, 2025, 12:05 am.
Visit Our Sponsor’s:
News Post In – News
