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Harvard Transfers 1850 Daguerreotypes of Enslaved People to Charleston Museum

The move follows a settlement that ended Tamara Lanier’s lawsuit over the images’ custody.

A view of the Business School campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Faith Ninivaggi/File Photo
FILE - Susanna Moore, left, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, celebrates with Tamara Lanier, second right, and attorneys Ben Crump and Josh Koskoff at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel, May 28, 2025, in Boston, Mass. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham, File)
FILE - Tamara Lanier attends a news conference near the Harvard Club, March 20, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Tamara Lanier listens as her lawyer speaks to the media about a lawsuit accusing Harvard University of the monetization of photographic images of her great-great-great grandfather, an enslaved African man named Renty, and his daughter Delia, outside of the Harvard Club in New York, U.S., March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

Overview

  • International African American Museum officials said Wednesday they now hold the original plates after Harvard’s December handover, with an unveiling in Charleston.
  • The 1850 images depict Renty, his daughter Delia, and five others photographed shirtless for Louis Agassiz’s racist research program.
  • The museum will preserve the daguerreotypes and present new prints as the centerpiece of an exhibit focused on the seven South Carolinians.
  • The transfer caps a seven-year legal fight led by descendant Tamara Lanier, after a 2022 ruling denied her ownership claim but allowed an emotional-distress case and a 2025 deal resolved custody.
  • Harvard said it sought a museum placement because it could not verify Lanier’s lineage, while her lawyer said the university licensed the images for revenue.