Those seeking irrefutable proof of the power of an image should look no further than the yearslong, highly publicized dispute over a selection of 1850 daguerreotypes of enslaved Southerners. Until last week, they been part of the museum collection of Harvard University.
But in late May, after an effort that began 15 years ago, the university announced it settled a lawsuit filed in 2019 by Tamara Lanier, a descendant of two subjects of the images, to relinquish 15 daguerreotypes of Renty, Delia and other people.
Advancing from Harvard
Some of those images are heading home to South Carolina, given from Harvard to the International African American Museum. Two of the subjects, a man known as Renty and his daughter Delia who were disrobed from the waist up, were enslaved in South Carolina.
In a statement in the May 28 issue of The New York Times, Harvard spokesman James Chisholm said, “Harvard has been committed to stewarding the daguerreotypes in a responsible manner and finding an institutional home for them where their historical significance is appreciated,” adding the complexity of the case does not enable Harvard to confirm Lanier’s genealogy.
According to Lanier, Harvard never took a meeting with her. Earlier this year, she chronicled her 15-year effort to do so in From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim My Legacy (Penguin, 2025).
In a June interview with Charleston City Paper, the author recounted that Harvard has said that she would never get the guides back and the court supported that, but she refused to relent.
“I said I am claiming this victory in advance, and I dated it.
I said the cultural property of my enslaved ancestors will ultimately find a fitting resting place where their humanity and their legacies could be celebrated in the way that they deserve,” she said, adding that she vowed never “to stop naming, blaming or shaming Harvard until they do the right thing by Renty and Delia.”
A rightful resting place
For Lanier, the IAAM is that fitting resting place. It’s a notion that is also heartily endorsed by the museum’s president and CEO, Tonya Matthews.
“IAAM is one of the leading African American history museums in the country and so it’s very appropriate that we are approached to hold critical artifacts,” she said. “In this particular case though, I could honestly think of no better venue.”
Matthews flags the origins of the photos and the individuals, both traced to South Carolina. Moreover, she said, a critical part of the story of the images is based on genealogy, which played an integral role in Lanier proving and stating her case.
With its specialty in genealogy, IAAM offers a globally-connected resource in its Center for Family History. It is where Lanier began some of her earliest genealogy work, which the museum facilitated two years before its doors opened to the public.
“The combination of all three of those things as being who we are as a leading African American History Museum — us being in South Carolina, that story being in South Carolina, and arguably one of the linchpins of the conversation being about genealogy — there’s no better place than the museum,” said Matthews.
“In those early days, with the potential of the objects coming to IAAM at some point, we were intrigued and excited by the possibility, and when that conversation resurfaced very recently as potential reality, we did not hesitate,” Matthews said.
Power in photography
The potency of images has played out in marked ways in redressing narratives in the American Black experience, past and present. In the past few years, iPhone captures have time and again exposed all manner of racial profiling and racist aggression, confirming true accounts when others have sought to spin or suppress.
From its earliest years, Louis Daguerre’s process of using a silver iodide-coated plate in the first portable camera did so, too. Available publicly in 1839, it was little more than a decade prior to the 1850 daguerreotypes to which Harvard held fast.
In the images, Renty and Delia have been disrobed, both from the waist up, stripped of dignity in a manner belying what Lanier understood as Renty’s literate, thoughtful character. They had been commissioned this way by a Harvard professor, Louis Agassiz, whose aim was to prove that the subjects were part of an inferior race.
“He’s the father of the eugenics movement. He’s the father of medical apartheid,” Lanier said.
At the same moment, some African Americans leveraged that power to safeguard their own freedom. Ellen and William Craft, the subjects of Ilyon Woo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Master Slave Husband Wife.” When they escaped from enslavement in Georgia, fled, returned and eventually lived in South Carolina, they used images as a potent prop during their flight. Taken circa 1849-50, a daguerreotype portrays Ellen Craft posing as a white traveler by the name of Mr. Johnson, who was traveling with her servant, a disguised William.
The look, legacy and proprietorship of the haunting images of Renty and Delia held such sway over Lanier that she spent years ensuring that their fate was upended. Now, they impact those who visit the museum.
Plans are underway for a homegoing ceremony.
“South Carolina is kind of like the origin story for so many people, including my ancestors. And I just saw this as an opportunity for a homegoing ceremony,” Lanier said.
Still, these significant images require vigilant safeguarding. First, there is the fragility of a 19th-century artifact, which cannot be exposed to elements for long periods of time. Matthews envisions a digital display to share the story in the museum. The arrival date and number of images to be given to IAAM is still in the works.
There are other hazards, too.
“I have not been completely oblivious to the politics that have been going on and am somewhat concerned,” she said, as narratives once again fall prey to obsolescence and others are asserted. For that reason as well, a cultural home in IAAM spoke to her.
“I just felt that it was safer,” she said. Lanier, who is based in Connecticut, explained that her family has always felt deeply connected with Gullah-Geechee heritage, often in ways she discovered after her deepening exploration of Renty and Delia in South Carolina.
For one, there is the palpable call from her ancestors, urging her to tilt at seemingly insurmountable institutions, training a watchful eye over to steward those who came before her, and shepherding them to the place they knew as home.
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