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Harvard University agreed to give up ownership of two portraits of enslaved people, ending a six-year legal fight with a woman who says she’s their descendant, The New York Times reported.
The two daguerreotypes were commissioned 175 years ago by Harvard professor and zoologist Louis Agassiz, who believed in a discredited theory that Black and white people come from different genetic origins—a view used to justify pseudoscience about African Americans’ racial inferiority. Tamara Lanier sued Harvard in 2019 for keeping the images of the father and daughter in its Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and profiting off them by using them in university materials. She also accused Harvard of causing her emotional distress by repeatedly questioning her ancestry.
The two images are expected to go to the International African American Museum of South Carolina, the state where the pair depicted, identified as Renty and Delia, were enslaved, along with five other images of enslaved people.
“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,” Harvard spokesperson James Chisholm said in a statement to The New York Times Wednesday.
Tonya M. Matthews, CEO of the International African American Museum, praised Lanier for her persistence.
“The bravery, tenacity, and grace shown by Ms. Lanier throughout the long and arduous process of returning these critical pieces of Renty and Delia’s story to South Carolina is a model for us all,” she said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Lanier originally fought for ownership of the images but celebrated the settlement agreement as “a victory for reparations.”
“Today marks a turning point in American history,” Lanier said at a press conference Wednesday. “This landmark settlement is not just a victory for my family. It’s a victory for every descendant who has carried the weight of a stolen past and dared to demand it back.”
