Who Should Own Photos of Slaves? The Descendants, not Harvard, a Lawsuit Says

xoxodede

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Tamara Lanier is suing Harvard University for ownership of daguerreotypes of slaves who she says are her ancestors. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times

NORWICH, Conn. — The two slaves, a father and daughter, were stripped to the waist and positioned for frontal and side views. Then, like subjects in contemporary mug shots, their pictures were taken, as part of a racist study arguing that black people were an inferior race.

Little did they know that 169 years later, they would be at the center of a dispute over who should own the fruits of American slavery.

On Wednesday, Tamara Lanier, 54, filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts saying that she is a direct descendant of the pair, who were identified by their first names, Renty and Delia, and that the valuable photographs — commissioned by a professor at Harvard and now stored in a museum on campus — are hers.

The images, Ms. Lanier said, are records of her personal family history, not cultural artifacts to be kept by an institution.

The case renews focus on the role that the country’s oldest universities played in slavery, and also comes amid a growing debate over whether the descendants of the enslaved are entitled to reparations — and what those reparations might look like.

“It is unprecedented in terms of legal theory and reclaiming property that was wrongfully taken,” Benjamin Crump, one of Ms. Lanier’s lawyers, said. “Renty’s descendants may be the first descendants of slave ancestors to be able to get their property rights.”

Jonathan Swain, a spokesman for Harvard, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Universities in recent years have acknowledged and expressed contrition for their ties to slavery. Harvard Law School abandoned an 80-year-old shield based on the crest of a slaveholding family that helped endow the institution. Georgetown University decided to give an advantage in admissions to descendants of enslaved people who were sold to fund the school.

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A program for a 2017 conference at Harvard on the links between academia and slavery. The program bears the image of Renty, a slave from whom Ms. Lanier says she descended. Credit: Karsten Moran for The New York Times

A series of federal laws has also compelled museums to repatriate human remains and sacred objects to Native American tribes.

The lawsuit says the images are the “spoils of theft,” because as slaves Renty and Delia were unable to give consent. It says that the university is illegally profiting from the images by using them for “advertising and commercial purposes,” such as by using Renty’s image on the cover a $40 anthropology book. And it argues that by holding on to the images, Harvard has perpetuated the hallmarks of slavery that prevented African-Americans from holding, conveying or inheriting personal property.

“I keep thinking, tongue in cheek a little bit, this has been 169 years a slave, and Harvard still won’t free Papa Renty,” said Mr. Crump, who in 2012 represented the family of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager killed by a community watch member in Florida. Ms. Lanier is also represented by Josh Koskoff, a lawyer who represents families of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre victims.

Renty and Delia were among seven slaves who appeared in 15 images made using the daguerreotype process, an early form of photography imprinted on silvered copper plates.

The pictures are haunting and voyeuristic, with the subjects staring at the camera with detached expressions.

The daguerreotypes were commissioned by Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-born zoologist and Harvard professor who is sometimes called the father of American natural science. They were taken in 1850 by J.T. Zealy, in a studio in Columbia, S.C.

Agassiz, a rival of Charles Darwin, subscribed to polygenesis, the theory that black and white people descended from different origins. The theory, later discredited, was used to promote the racist idea that black people were inferior to whites. Agassiz viewed the slaves as anatomical specimens to document his beliefs, according to historical sources.

The daguerreotypes were forgotten until they were discovered in an unused storage cabinet in the attic of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in 1976. They were thought to be the earliest known photographs of American slaves.

Notes found with the images give small clues as to the identity of the slaves — their names, plantations and tribes. Renty was born in Congo, according to the label on his daguerreotype.

In 2017, Ms. Lanier and her daughter attended a conference at Harvard on the links between academia and slavery that included speakers such as Drew Faust, Harvard’s president at the time, and the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. They said they were offended to see the speakers positioned under a huge projection of Renty’s face.

Mr. Coates, the author of a widely discussed article making the case for reparations, said in an interview that while he deeply respected the scholars at the conference, he sympathized with Ms. Lanier’s cause.

“That photograph is like a hostage photograph,” Mr. Coates said of Renty’s image. “This is an enslaved black man with no choice being forced to participate in white supremacist propaganda — that’s what that photograph was taken for.”

He said he understood how Ms. Lanier felt seeing it at the conference. “I get why it would bother her,” he said. “I wasn’t aware of all that at the time.”

Interviewed at her home in Norwich, Ms. Lanier, a retired chief probation officer for the State of Connecticut, said she had not heard of the photos until about 2010, when she began tracing her genealogy for a family project.

Her mother, Mattye Pearl Thompson-Lanier, who died that year, had passed down a strong oral tradition of their family’s lineage from an African ancestor called “Papa Renty.” Shonrael, Ms. Lanier’s daughter, wrote a fifth-grade project about her ancestor in 1996.

The lawsuit could hinge on evidence of that chain of ancestry. Ms. Lanier’s amateur sleuthing led to death records, census records and a handwritten inventory from 1834 of the slaves on the plantation of Col. Thomas Taylor in Columbia and their dollar values.

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An inventory from 1834 listing the slaves on the plantation of Col. Thomas Taylor in Columbia, S.C. The names Big Renty and Renty appear on the list.
Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times



The slave inventory lists a Big Renty and a Renty, and listed under the latter is Delia. Ms. Lanier believes that Big Renty is her “Papa Renty” and the father of Renty and Delia, and has traced them to her mother, who was born to sharecroppers in Montgomery, Ala.

Her genealogical research has its skeptics. Gregg Hecimovich, who is contributing to a book about the slave daguerreotypes, to be published by the Peabody next year, said it was important to note that the slave inventory has the heading “To Wit, in Families.” Big Renty and Renty are at the top of separate groupings, he said, implying that they are the heads of separate families.

“I’d be very excited to work with Tamara,” said Dr. Hecimovich, who is chairman of the English department at Furman University. “But the bigger issue is it would be very hard to make a slam-dunk case that she believes she has.”

Molly Rogers, the author of a previous book about the images called “Delia’s Tears,” said that tracing families under slavery was extremely complex. “It’s not necessarily by blood,” she said. “It could be people who take responsibility for each other. Terms, names, family relationships are very much complicated by the fact of slavery.”

One intellectual property lawyer, Rick Kurnit, said he thought Ms. Lanier would have a hard time claiming ownership of the daguerreotypes. He said the famous photograph “V-J Day in Times Square,” for instance, belonged to the photographer and not to the sailor or the nurse who are kissing. But that image, of course, was taken in a public space.

Yxta Maya Murray, a professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, said that images taken by force were tantamount to robbery. “If she’s a descendant, then I would stand for her,” Professor Murray said of Ms. Lanier.

The question remains what Ms. Lanier would do with the images of Renty and Delia if she were to win her case in court.

Ms. Lanier, who is asking for a jury trial and unspecified punitive and emotional damages, says she does not know, and would have to have a family meeting about it. She does not rule out licensing the images.

Mr. Crump, her lawyer, had another idea. The daguerreotypes, he said, should be taken on a tour of America, so that everyone can see them.

Who Should Own Photos of Slaves? The Descendants, not Harvard, a Lawsuit Says
 

BigMan

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Does she have standing tho? This case will probably be dismissed
 

get these nets

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Does she have standing tho? This case will probably be dismissed
Her ancestor didn't sign a release, in fact the law wouldn't have recognized it at the time if he did.
BUT.....Emancipation Proclamation and then, the 13th amendment made slavery illegal.

I mentioned the EP because after it was issued, enslaved people in the confederacy were considered contraband of war.

I'm wondering if the enslaved being granted citizenship by the 13th would mean that the photographs were legally then the property of the person being photographed. If the plantation owner lost legal claim of "ownership" of the actual person....I'd imagine that the photographer would lose legal claim to the ownership of his likeness.
 
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DPresidential

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He ancestor didn't sign a release, in fact the law wouldn't have recognized it at the time if he did.
BUT.....Emancipation Proclamation and then, the 13th amendment made slavery illegal.

I mentioned the EP because after it was issued, enslaved people in the confederacy were considered contraband of war.

I'm wondering if the enslaved being granted citizenship by the 13th would mean that the photographs were legally then the property of the person being photographed. If the plantation owner lost legal claim of "ownership" of the actual person....I'd imagine that the photographer would lose legal claim to the ownership of his likeness.
/thread.


I am thinking the same thing.

Unfortunately, it's like claiming a non-citizen has particular property rights recognized only for citizens...

At the time of the photo, the individuals in the photos were not considered citizens or recognized as having a right to property.

I am now thinking that her case would be dismissed because much like how particular rights that an adult cmay have, a child - although will become an adult at some point - would not have had that right vested yet thus said child would not be able to claim "I should be able to vote since I will be an adult one day!

A slave, according to those laws, belonged to an owner and the owner would have said property right.
 

xoxodede

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/thread.


I am thinking the same thing.

Unfortunately, it's like claiming a non-citizen has particular property rights recognized only for citizens...

At the time of the photo, the individuals in the photos were not considered citizens or recognized as having a right to property.

I am now thinking that her case would be dismissed because much like how particular rights that an adult cmay have, a child - although will become an adult at some point - would not have had that right vested yet thus said child would not be able to claim "I should be able to vote since I will be an adult one day!

A slave, according to those laws, belonged to an owner and the owner would have said property right.

Great rundown. Thanks @Dip and @Get These Nets for asking and contributing.

But, what happens after the legal owner dies -- since he worked for Harvard do they get ownership? Also, the photographer -- did not own the enslaved who was photographed. They were owned by someone-- but if the legal owner didn't own those he photographed what happens then?
 

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GPBear

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The fact that she has to sue at all is :snoop:

21st century museology needs to take a step forward and start recuperating countries and people their institutions have stolen from.
I don't know if it's totally unprecedented, because there's many Jews post-WWII that successfully sued for their stolen artworks to be returned; however when a African country like Egypt, or a Middle Eastern country tries to retrieve works stolen by the British in their museums, the answer is always "but we can't trust your countries with these artifacts. :mjpls: theyre safer here. :troll:"
I mean look at this non-sense from last year:
Should museum artefacts be returned to the countries they came from? | Letters
"Richard Dowden questions whether countries really want their objects back" :dahell:
If someone stole Richard Dowden's TV, I wonder if he'd really want it back. :stopitslime:
 

Nicole0416_718_929_646212

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A slave, according to those laws, belonged to an owner and the owner would have said property right.
Disagree. Those laws are no longer valid in reference to slave ownership. The Court should retroactively apply modern laws, rules and guidelines in reference to the subject. There are some precedents that support this. Properties seized from the Jews during the holocaust were included as part of their reparations settlement or returned to surviving family members, younger generations. Implied ownership is not obtained through theft or illegal methods of procurement.
 

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-Court of Appeals said that victims of the Holocaust can claim compensation in a US court for any Jewish property seized by Hungary from the moment the Jews were expelled from their homes, calling the theft “genocidal taking” in our case,slavery proceeds
 

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"In a similar vein, if I inherit property that is the product of slave labor, libertarian property theory suggests that I do not have an ethical claim to that property. Instead, the descendants of the slave who produced it have a genuine libertarian justification to seek restitution from me, the guiltless descendent, for the property that rightly belonged to their ancestors. Taking this logic a step further, it need not even be the actual item produced by slave labor – there only needs to have been some wealth unjustly acquired through slave labor for there to be a legitimate libertarian claim for the descendants of slaves to demand restitution from the descendants of their ancestor’s owners."
"Owning a slave is a crime under libertarian law. . . . Those people who owned slaves in the pre-civil war U.S. were guilty of the crime of kidnaping, even though such practices were legal at the time. A part of the value of their plantations was based on the forced labor of blacks. Were justice fully done in 1865, these people would have been incarcerated, and that part of the value of their holdings attributable to slave labor would have been turned over to the ex-slaves"
- she definitely has a case , I'm not rushing in them that the case will be dismissed. She does have entitlement for her lawsuit.

As precedent, there are laws on the books in the U.S. that would apply to support her argument and from other countries that had a history of slavery or genocide (South Africa, Haiti, Hungary..etc)
 

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Damn, I like that argument.

Now, would you think the remedy would be to allow her to sue on behalf of that image belonging to the freeman she descendant from...

Or would the application of your argument result in the image or photograph being considered to never have had a valid sale and as such, considering the image of Renty was not taken with a reasonable expectation of privacy, they wouldn't need his permission?

I'm merely parroting a quick skim but I believe most jurisdictions have laws that protect photographers in that you, me, or Renty would have a right to ownership or prohibit a person from taking a photo only if there was reasonable right to privacy. Edit: I mean reasonable expectation of privacy.

Awful fukking circumstance, nonetheless and I actually hope she prevails.
 
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